Seventy-Four Hours Later
by TomFoolery
Summary: Uhura didn't hate Commander Spock exactly: she just didn't want him grading her comprehensive end-of-term training mission. Having the strict Vulcan looking over her shoulder seemed like the worst thing that could happen, until they crash-landed on an uncharted planetoid. A Spock/Uhura backstory trope. A sequel titled, "An Algorithm for Dating" now published.
1. Departure

It was to be their first time flying a non-simulated mission, and the four-person flight crew buzzed with nervous energy, though each did their best to maintain an external collected appearance. They were about to embark on their capstone, comprehensive final exam for the first term of their third year at Starfleet Academy: a twenty-hour planetary survey and reconnaissance mission to Aldebaran and back.

Nyota Uhura was pleased with the crew. Though they would be graded as individuals, they would also be graded collectively, and she didn't think she could have ended up on a better team.

She would take weapons and communications, Anthony Nemechek was assigned as the mission's flight engineer, Pavel Chekov was to be the navigator and sensor operator, and Hikaru Sulu would take the helm. She knew Sulu fairly well and Chekov and Nemechek in passing.

Sulu had the best grades of any pilot at the Academy, and Nemechek was supposed to be a wizard in warp theory with a good head for ingenuity and improvisation. She heard Chekov was only sixteen, but heard he was among the most brilliant and promising mathematicians Starfleet had ever produced, and such a skillset would no doubt be invaluable for the mission's navigator.

The instructor assigned to fly with them as an observer-controller was also one of the best at the Academy, Lieutenant Agatha Bautista. She was tough, but fair, and possessed the rare combination of both a sharp wit and a quiet patience. She'd been Uhura's instructor in both astrogation and stellar cartography, and she was secretly excited to pick her brain in a more close setting without three hundred other students vying for her attention.

"I couldn't sleep last night," Sulu admitted with a laugh.

"Me either," Chekov agreed, arms crossed about his chest. "And this is going to be a _long_ mission."

"I couldn't sleep thinking about the fact that we're on Risa and not allowed to mix with the locals," Nemechek grumbled.

Uhura rolled her eyes. It had taken them three days to travel from Earth to Risa for this mission, and she couldn't deny she'd stayed awake later than she probably should have studying last minute things.

"Oh come on. This is going to be a piece of cake," Nemechek laughed. "Just a little trip to the edge of the Betreka nebula and back. No sweat."

"Yeah," she replied.

 _No sweat._

An hour ago they had already passed the first part of the exam, which was performing maintenance checks and pre-launching procedures on the shuttle they would be flying. Now they sat in the holding area of the shuttle bay on Risa, waiting for Lieutenant Bautista. All the other teams had already left, and she was getting antsy.

Uhura glanced at the large digital clock above the entrance. They were scheduled to depart at 1300, and it was now 1217. They were done with pre-flight checks, but it would take at least half an hour to get the shuttle's systems properly online for departure and she hated cutting things this close.

"This is what Starfleet is about though," she thought to herself. "Plan, get your plans changed, adapt, and succeed."

Her fellow crewmembers seemed to be having the same thought, and she noticed their eyes darting to the clock and watching the minutes drag by.

At 1230 she stood and prepared to walk to the manifest desk and ask about the status of their mission when the door opened and she turned, expecting to see Lieutenant Bautista.

 _Disappointment_. It was only Commander Spock.

She started to approach the desk to inquire after their observer-controller when he spoke.

"I presume the four of you comprise Gamma Team?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she said, squinting her eyes at him.

"Your mission has begun," he said, turning crisply on his heel and leaving the holding area. "Follow me."

The four crew members exchanged quizzical glances, and she chased Commander Spock into the open shuttle bay.

"Sir, where is Lieutenant Bautista?"

"On her way back to Earth with a medical condition," he explained. "I am qualified to act as your observer-controller."

Sulu, Chekov, and Nemechek caught up with them and waited anxiously for a status update on their mission.

"So... _what_? We're flying with _you_?" she asked, fighting to keep the disbelief out of her tone.

"You infer correctly," he said.

She had been in Commander Spock's xenolinguistics programming lab the previous year. He had the honor of being the first and only instructor to ever give her less than "exceptional" rating. Of course, everyone had told her not to take it personally, because he had never given _anyone_ an "exceptional" rating. _At least not that anyone had ever heard of._

"Sir, we already did pre-flight checks on the _Volta III_ ," Sulu explained. "Lieutenant Bautista had signed for that vessel, and she needs to be here to transfer command codes."

"I am aware, cadet," Spock said. "I have signed for the _Dalton II_."

"That's a type-15 shuttlecraft," Nemechek argued. "We've trained and prepared for type-16 vessels. The fifteens aren't even authorized for use beyond Federation space anymore."

"And as we are not leaving Federation space, your argument is irrelevant. I think you shall find it has all of the necessary components. It was inspected this morning and cleared to fly," Spock explained. "You are also wasting time arguing immaterial details. You will lose considerable points for a late launch."

" _That's not_ -"

Her words froze in her throat. She had been about to say, "that's not fair," but assumed it would fall on deaf, pointy ears.

"It takes thirty minutes just to do all of the necessary pre-flight checks," she protested. "And we haven't even done maintenance checks on the _Dalton II_. We're supposed to do these checks while getting the systems online?"

"I have served on a crew that performed the same task in nineteen minutes," he countered, checking the time on his PADD. "This team currently has twenty-seven minutes remaining before scheduled launch. You are not using your time wisely."

She stared at him open-mouthed and wanted to really lay into him, but she sighed in frustration and stamped her foot. Sulu, Chekov, and Nemechek were already jogging toward the _Dalton II_ , located 300 meters up the shuttle bay. Spock noted something on his PADD and looked at her, and she begrudgingly ran after her crewmembers.

When she boarded the shuttle, her three comrades were clawing and groping at control panels, gearing up systems, pulling out gear to inventory, and calling out check sequences. She sat down at the terminal to the left of the helm and did her best to keep from shaking.

Spock strolled in through the port hatch and took a seat in the rear jumpseat to observe.

"Impulse engines, online," Sulu barked.

"Check," Chekov replied in his thick Russian accent, looking over to his terminal while rustling through emergency equipment. "Thrusters, fully operational also."

"Sir, there's an internal plasma leak in the aft manifold," Nemechek whined.

"It has been noted in the shuttle's previous maintenance records," Spock mused.

"Well, maybe I would know that if I had more than ten minutes to look over the shuttle's maintenance history," Nemechek hissed under his breath.

"I am sorry, I did not-"

"Communication tests on all channels are green," she called, interrupting Spock and exchanging glances with Nemechek.

She began running a test on their hypothetical weapons: the training mission didn't allow for use of live phasers or torpedoes, but accounting for the systems was still part of her grade.

 _Along with hand weapons. Damn._

She hastily flipped around in her chair and made her way to the aft of the shuttle, trying to keep out of Nemechek's way as he feverishly primed the small warp core.

Chekov made himself busy inventorying the medical supplies and food rations. She could hear him noting serious deficiencies, though none significant enough to delay the launch of a mission lasting less than twenty-four hours through Federation space.

She grabbed the case with the hand phasers and slammed it down on the seat next to Spock.

"Prepared for weapons serial number inventory, sir," she snapped.

The disdain seeping through her voice was unfortunate, but she couldn't take it back now.

"Ready," he replied, flipping the screen on his PADD.

She began to read the serial numbers of the phasers while the others managed to get the rest of the shuttle's systems ready for launch. They made it with six minutes to spare and she took her seat next to Sulu with grim satisfaction.

No doubt Spock would still find arbitrary errors and shortcomings, but he couldn't deny that they made it in the allotted time.

"Impulse systems ready, prepare for departure," Sulu shouted.

"Course laid in, bearing 012-mark-16. Destination, Aldebaran," Chekov added, speaking slowly through his accent.

"Impulse ready on your mark," Nemechek called to Sulu.

"Ready, one-eighth impulse," Sulu replied.

Out of the corner of her eye, Uhura could see Spock's canted eyebrows rise as he deftly typed out notes on his grading PADD. She scowled.

"Starfleet channels open, long range scanners clear of alien traffic," she called, feeling jittery but euphoric.

Sulu engaged the sequence to move the _Dalton II_ out of the shuttle bay, but it stalled. She glanced at him, and Sulu gulped and checked the helm monitor.

"Sprung another internal plasma leak," Nemechek groaned. "Computer's reading it in the forward sensor conduit."

"What classification?" Spock replied.

"Class I, _sir_ ," Nemechek sighed.

"You are aware that the vessel remains operational so long as the plasma leak is contained and not higher than classification II, are you not?"

"Aye. _Sir_ ," Nemechek growled.

The cabin lights flickered and then went out and were replaced by emergency lighting, and Nemechek began cussing. Spock was unfazed, and Chekov rose from his chair to see if he could provide any assistance. Ten minutes later, Nemechek and Chekov had the warp reactors back online, the power restored, and the forward plasma leak contained.

She noted the time in the shuttle's log as 1305 with a hint of defeat in her voice. _Five minutes late._

She saw Spock entering a long string of information into his PADD and resisted the urge to rip it out of his hands and stomp on it. Less than an hour ago, she had such high hopes for her grades this term. Now it was all drifting away on the whims of a Vulcan who was practically married to policies and in a vessel probably held together by engineering tape and older than the Federation itself.

 _Twenty hours to go. What could possibly go wrong?_


	2. Disaster

It had been the longest, most nerve-wracking, most _boring_ eight hours of her life. Commander Spock's presence seemed to set their whole crew on edge, and where she normally might have joked or gossiped during downtime, she wondered if he would dock them points for excessive and pointless chatter. So the only speech heard throughout the small cabin related exclusively to mission updates, log entries, and the occasional question about the status of one of the shuttle's systems.

Despite their disastrous departure, things had gone very smoothly during their flight. When she dimmed her computer screen enough, it became reflective enough in the low lighting for her to catch a glimpse of Spock sitting in the jump seat three meters behind her.

The guy was like a robot – head and eyes straightforward at almost all times, never talking, never smiling. _Just watching._

She was almost startled when she heard the soft "ping" of her computer terminal alerting her to a message from Starfleet outpost 67Alpha. She received sporadic messages about their training mission from the Academy command center on Risa, but those were notional and anticipated. They were part of the exercise.

 _This was real._

"Commander, Starfleet authorities just issued an advisory for this sector due to suspected activity of the," she paused and gulped slightly before quickly adding, "Orion Syndicate."

 _The Orion Syndicate? This far out?_

"Transfer the message to my data PADD, cadet," he replied.

"Aye sir, already done," she said, turning back to her terminal to reread the message, acknowledge its receipt with outpost 67Alpha, and distribute it among the crew of the small shuttle.

"это интересно," Chekov said nonchalantly to himself, giving her a weak smile before beginning to read the advisory for himself.

"нет. это плохо," she replied, rolling her eyes.

"ты говоришь по русски?!"

"No, not really."

Her mind was too busy to tease out the nuances of Russian. Telling Chekov that the presence of the Orion Syndicate in the area was "bad" was about the limits of her Russian language skills. She also didn't want to waste time reflecting on the irony that she was far more gifted in xenolinguistics than in the diverse languages that originated in her own cosmic backyard.

She pulled up their current projected flight path, noting their flight plan currently had them travelling through a sector of space between Elora and a region known colloquially as the "Briar Patch." It had once been a hotly contested area between the Orion Syndicate, Nausicaan pirates, and Klingon resistance fighters.

It had been mostly tame for the better part of a decade, though every few months, new rumors would crop up that never panned out. As cadets, they didn't have proper clearances to access legitimate Starfleet intelligence reports, but for the purposes of their training mission, they had been given a briefing of current information on activity in the area.

 _They were told there was nothing, to expect nothing, have a nice flight, and good luck._

"What is your decision, Cadet Nemechek?" Spock asked.

Nemechek was in command for another two hours. The training mission was to last twenty hours, and command time was divided evenly among the four-person crew. She was to go regrettably last simply by virtue of the alphabet.

Nemechek poked his head out of the engineering cabin and scratched it.

"With all due respect, sir, this isn't a training scenario anymore."

"Nevertheless, you _are_ currently in command. How do you intend to proceed with the information?" Spock insisted.

"I uh, _well_ ," he said, shifting his weight. "Uhura, anything on coms?"

"I'm scanning all open channels and-"

She froze. Nemechek looked at her with wide eyes.

"And _what_?" he asked, clearly forcing himself to keep his voice calm.

Through her earpiece, she could just make out a modulating pulse on a very low band. She began typing data into her monitor and isolated it to the infrared spectrum. _Very low band indeed._

"I'm detecting a signal on an IR band," she clarified.

"Could be interference from the nebula we're approaching," Chekov argued.

"I don't think so," she replied as she began running a program to decrypt it.

"On what information do you base your claim, Cadet Uhura?" Spock asked.

"It's regular, but at the same time, intermittent. It doesn't sound like natural radiation or any other phenomena I've ever heard," she explained. " _Listen_."

She removed her earpiece and tied in the ship's sensors with the intercom and the crackle of noise from natural space radiation softly echoed through the cabin.

"I don't hear anything," Sulu said in confusion.

Nemechek and Chekov both shook their heads in agreement. Spock however leaned forward and listened intently.

" _There_ ," she said in frustration at a barely perceptible blip.

"You're just hearing things," Nemechek argued.

"No, I do not believe so," Spock interjected. "Has the shuttle's computer analyzed the signal?"

The program was still running, but was rapidly decrypting what appeared to be a simple, binary, digital message coded into the amplitude of the modulation of several frequencies. This was no random anomaly or secret space communiqué: whoever sent this message made it so easy a child from a pre-warp civilization could decode it.

"It's repeating a short message. Maybe a warning or emergency beacon?" she answered, flipping through half a dozen screens on her terminal.

"Notify outpost 67Alpha and Starfleet command for this sector," Spock ordered.

"Working on it now, sir," she said.

"Cadet Chekov, have scans provided any additional information?" Spock asked.

"None, sir," the young Russian answered. "I am picking up unusually high cosmic debris, but that seemed reasonable, since we are so close to the nebula."

"Is there anything on long-range scans?"

"Several transport vessels less two light years-"

Uhura had been about to interrupt him to say the message was Nausicaan in origin when the whole of her existence seemed to flip upside down in a swell of heat, pressure, and searing pain.

Her head slammed against the wall and she saw bright flashes of light in her vision. When she tried sitting up to make sense of what had just happened, she noticed how dizzy she was and how muted the sound around her seemed. She could feel burns down the side of her left leg and turned dumbly in her chair in the direction of the blast.

She realized Chekov was yelling in Russian and frantically struggling to reach the engineering compartment. Though Spock appeared dazed in the jump seat behind her, he was struggling to his feet. He bent down and her eyes followed his motion, recoiling at the sight of Nemechek's lifeless body lying facedown in the portal between the main cabin and the engineering section.

Spock stood in a rather un-Vulcan and unsteady manner and made his way to the terminal next to hers. Something about his purposeful movements was causing her mind to quickly focus back to reality with an acute sharpness she'd never experienced. The shuttle's emergency alarm was blaring and flooding the shuttle with intermittent red light.

 _They had been struck._ By _what_ , she didn't know, but she needed to send a distress signal.

"Shields are up," Spock said.

"We're down to warp one," Sulu stammered.

"We're losing power," Chekov called. "The automatic containment field won't hold."

"Warp engines are now offline," Sulu droned.

She furiously tried sending a distress call on any channel but was receiving no response. It suddenly occurred to her that there was still a loud ringing in her ears. She tried hard to focus, and a sinking realization began to dawn.

"Communications are offline," she said, her voice managing to remain eerily calm.

"We only have power to sustain impulse engines for another four minutes," noted Sulu.

She reflexively stood and made her way to the aft of the engineering cabin to manually deploy distress beacons. She was shaking, but almost reacting on instinct.

The engineering compartment was a disaster. Plasma leaked everywhere, shuttle components were twisted into disarray, and the miniscale warp reactor was dark.

 _What had happened?_

She was just out of earshot of Spock and Sulu's tense conversation in the forward cabin, but things seemed very bad indeed.

"Uhura, _help_!" Chekov yelled, trying to push two enormous black boxes of emergency supplies that had fallen from an overhead compartment off of the engineering console.

 _Adrenaline was a powerful thing._ The pair heaved with everything they had and managed to free up the workstation.

"I need you to-"

"I _can't_ ," she interrupted. "I have to get the emergency distress beacons deployed."

She made it to the port side of the cabin and stopped short. _Where were they?_

She cursed under her breath. This was a class 15 shuttle, which meant… _she didn't know where they were._

She began tearing apart the engineering cabin, doing her best to skirt around Chekov's movements as he struggled to contain plasma leaks and keep power to the shuttle.

"We will make an emergency landing on a nearby planetoid in 94 seconds," Spock's composed voice crackled over the shuttle's internal communication system.

 _How could he be so damn calm?_

After another painful minute of searching, she returned to the main cabin. She stepped gingerly over Nemechek and refused to allow herself to think about him right now, but as she glanced around desperately, tears began to blur her vision.

 _There_ , mounted on the rear wall behind the jump seat Spock had been sitting in just minutes ago. She ripped the panel off the wall with surprising force and listened with growing anxiety to Sulu and Spock discuss the _Dalton_ 's impending crash landing.

"Containment at fourteen percent," Sulu breathed.

"Cut impulse engines," said Spock.

The shuttle shuddered, causing her to almost lose balance while she began programming the beacons.

"What is our current location?" her voice cracked.

She began entering the long string of coordinates into the tiny computer on the beacon and forced herself to take a deep breath. Her adrenaline was waning; the pain of the plasma burns on her leg and arm was slowly becoming unmuted.

Her body began to feel the drag of the gravitational pull of the planetoid they were approaching. She clicked two of the three beacons to active and carried one in each hand to the starboard ejection tube.

"Cadet Sulu, adjust thrusters," Spock said, before yelling, "Brace for impact."

The shuttle's computer began a countdown. _10…9…8…_

She struggled almost in vain against the rapidly increasing gravitational force. The beacons in her hands practically felt like pianos, and she threw her body forward onto the ejection tube.

" _Uhura_!" Spock screamed.

"I have to get these out!" she shrieked.

 _4…3...2…_

She felt hands wrap around her waist and tackle her to the floor. Almost at the same second, the floor seemed to _punch_ her back viciously, and her vision faded to black.


	3. Deliberation

She couldn't be sure of how long she'd been unconscious. When she opened her eyes, her vision was blurred and everything hurt. She was lying face down underneath debris from the forward cabin that had been scattered when they crashed. She tried to focus her eyes.

"Everyone ok?" Sulu gasped.

His voice sounded muted and strange. She tried to take a deep breath but almost fainted again when she drew air into her lungs. The ribs on the left side of her body were broken. _Badly_. She could have figured that out even without the comprehensive first aid class she took last semester.

"Everyone ok?" Sulu repeated.

" _Fine_. I'm fine," called a voice accented with a Russian lilt from somewhere far away.

"Yeah," she whispered, wincing from the pain radiating through her chest.

She heard rustling behind her and something on top of her began moving and started to press down on her injured side.

" _Argh_!" she screamed.

She felt something drawing across her back and quickly realized it was an arm. She tried to catch her breath and inhaled shallowly. The pain was rapidly bringing her back to reality.

" _Commander_! _Uhura_!" Sulu cried, hoisting a heavy wall panel off of her.

That was when she realized Commander Spock was halfway lying on top of her. As he shifted his weight to stand, it put further pressure on her ribs and she whimpered, but she managed to keep from screaming. As he was getting up, she moved her arms to push herself upright into a sitting position. Her head was swimming, there was a sobering pain in her side, and she felt _very_ thirsty.

"What is the status of the containment field and life support?" Spock asked.

She noticed a strange timbre to his voice that almost made him sound human. He sounded… _in distress_.

"Both stable. For now," Sulu answered. "The ship automatically reverted to emergency power settings. Now that the engines are offline, the computer is estimating containment back up to 49 percent."

She put her hands back down on the floor of the cabin to steady herself as she made an attempt to stand upright. She was dizzy on two feet, and noticed Chekov moving into the forward cabin in her peripheral vision. A stream of red blood oozed from both nostrils and down around the corners of his mouth, making him look like he was wearing a bloody moustache.

"What happened to the shuttle?" she mumbled.

"We hit something," Sulu replied.

"There was _nothing_ on sensors," Chekov said.

"How could we have _hit_ something?" Uhura asked. "We were moving at warp 3, the differential alone-"

"I believe we struck an emplaced explosive device," Spock called from the forward cabin.

"Wait, _what_? Are you saying we hit a _space_ _mine_?" she asked in disbelief, looking down to Spock who was still sitting on the floor, cradling his left arm.

"Precisely," he replied.

She noticed his face was unusually pallid. Her eyes trailed down to his arm and she recoiled at the sight of bones protruding from it but was moderately fascinated by his green blood dripping onto the cabin floor. It was one thing to know Vulcans had green blood, but another thing entirely to _see_ it.

"Let me get the med kit," she murmured, limping slowly to the storage area.

The case of medical supplies was stored underneath the terminal she'd been sitting at, which was now dislodged from its previous location and sitting on its side in front of Sulu's terminal. It was painful and slow going with broken ribs.

"Nemechek is…" Sulu began.

"Dead," Spock finished.

She had forgotten about Nemechek. She shook her head vigorously at the thought, as though somehow it would shake the memory of his death completely out of her mind. Spock was so cold and unfeeling. Spock stood and made his way to the only operational computer terminal and began scrolling through various system screens and specifications.

Sulu helped her hoist her battered terminal off to one side to reveal the med kit. It had been crushed. _Badly_. The durable plastic case was in shards and the bone knitter she'd been looking for was slightly bent. She tried powering it on. _Nothing_.

"We are on a Class D planetoid with a thin atmosphere of primarily carbon dioxide," Spock said, analyzing the screen. "The current external temperature is negative 39 degrees Celsius. The nearby nebula is emitting high levels of metaphasic radiation and false vacuum fluctuations."

"Don't go outside. _Got it_ ," Sulu droned.

"We have six hours and twelve minutes remaining until power failure," Spock said casually. "Since the containment field maintaining hull integrity in the engineering compartment is occupying forty-two percent of our power reserves, it would be logical to seal off the rear section of the shuttle to conserve the remaining energy."

"I'll start getting supplies out of there," Chekov offered.

"Sir, the med kit was damaged. The bone knitter isn't working," she told the commander.

"Acknowledged."

 _Just like a robot._

She frowned and grabbed a tourniquet cuff and approached him.

"What should we do with Nemechek?" Chekov whispered.

She saw him standing over the deceased flight engineer with his arms crossed tightly across his chest. Sulu knelt down and futilely checked for a pulse and sighed.

"Now is not the time for mourning," Spock said. "Our lives remain in serious jeopardy."

Sulu stood, grabbed his dead friend, dragged him over to the front of the forward cabin, and tenderly covered him with a fire blanket.

"Sir, you're bleeding badly," she said, eyeing the blood seeping from the compound fracture in his left arm while trying to avoid looking directly at it.

His injury was _bad_ , and it made her stomach turn. She held out the cuff as if to explain what she wanted from him. He seemed to consider her for a second before taking the tourniquet. She scowled as she watched him struggle to put it on with one hand before she grabbed it and affixed it midway between his shoulder and elbow and hit the release for it to tighten instantly and stop the flow of blood. As close as she was, she could see him flinch from the pain. _Barely_ , but he did.

 _Maybe not a robot after all._

"Thank you, cadet," he said, turning back to the computer terminal.

"Sir, I think you should know the message I was decoding right before we were hit – it was Nausicaan."

"Were you able to translate it?"

"No, I didn't have time to tie in the universal translator, and Nausicaan isn't exactly a niche of mine," she admitted.

She watched him search among several running programs before arriving at her communications log. Her heart sank. Neither the message to outpost 67Alpha nor sector command had been successfully transmitted.

"But Starfleet knows our flight plan," she said aloud, more to herself than Spock.

"Correct."

"So it might take a few hours, but _someone_ will come looking for us when we don't show up at Aldebaran," she said, nodding to herself.

" _That_ is not in question," he replied calmly. "It is merely a problem of how long it will take, and _who_ will find us."

"How long _could_ it take? We crashed just minutes after we were hit," she argued. "So we should be pretty easy to find on mid range scanners."

"The nearby nebula is causing significant interference," he explained. "Based on the coordinates of our last transmitted location and our speed of travel, they would have a search radius of 16.14 light years. Even if they extrapolate the most likely trajectory of our crash, they would still have to locate us by visual means. At our current rate of power consumption, the probability that they would discover us before we lose life support is 3.9 percent."

 _Cheery bastard, wasn't he?_

Goosebumps began pricking her arms and at the back of her neck. She did her best to keep a straight face, and nodded sternly.

"But we're going to seal off engineering. _That_ will save power. And I'm sure there are other things we can do. We have environmental suits," she replied, trying to keep her voice level while she thought out loud.

"Correct," he said. "Yet even accounting for the most major sources of power conservation and alternative life support options, we shall only extend our total life support by an additional fifty-two hours. While that does greatly increase our chances of being found in time, it only raises the probability to 48.2 percent."

"Sir, we still have the distress beacons," she said, almost in desperation. "What if we lower the dispersion to boost the signal to overcome the interference from the nebula?" she argued.

He turned back to the terminal and began computing the metrics. She watched over his shoulder, fascinated by his methods. Then she saw the problem.

They had landed within a deep crater, and the projected rotation of the planetoid around another larger planet was pulling them not only closer to the nebula, but causing them to _face_ it as well. It would take another ninety-seven hours for them to be in the right position to transmit out away from the nebula.

In short, her idea _would_ work… _eventually_. But they would be dead by then.

He rose to his feet, allowing his mangled left arm to fall gently to his side and moved toward the engineering compartment. She looked from the computer terminal to Spock and wondered what he was doing.

She felt frustrated with his lack of communication. She, Chekov, and Sulu were well trained, but they weren't _mind readers_. They had no real experience with this kind of situation. As far as she could tell, she _was_ still this shuttle's designated communications officer, and they needed to know what was going on.

She stormed into engineering to find him fumbling with his good arm to open the compartment with the environmental suits. She briskly approached him and flipped the remaining latch on the compartment and it popped open. She shut it again with her hand, and her defiant behavior earned her a rather quizzical look from her commanding officer. Quizzical for a Vulcan anyway.

"What is the plan, _sir_?" she asked, trying to keep her tone respectful but feeling like she was probably failing miserably.

He looked over her shoulder and she could sense Chekov and Sulu standing in the doorway listening with rapt attention.

"Collect the distress beacons," he replied.

"And _then_ what?" she insisted, standing in front of him to block his path.

"I intend to send Cadets Sulu and Chekov to deploy them on the far side of the planetoid," he explained.

"I'll go. _I_ should be the one," she argued. "I'm responsible for communications and-"

"They are less severely injured than you. It does not require a significant degree of expertise to position a distress beacon."

"But _sir_ , that's-"

"Logical," he said with a degree of finality, moving past her and back into the main cabin, motioning for Sulu and Chekov to join him.

"Is this because I didn't get them out in time?" she snapped, following the others.

"This has nothing to do with your performance," he said. "But I did give you an order."

Her cheeks flushed, but rather than tell him what was really on her mind, she started gathering the black conically shaped beacons. He set the environmental suits down for Chekov and Sulu to inspect as he explained the route and their mission.

The planetoid was small: they would have to hike 112.7 kilometers round trip to reach the other side to place two distress beacons 40 kilometers apart. It was a significant distance, yet with the gravity of the planetoid being only a fraction of Starfleet standard, it would be relatively light exercise. Spock estimated that without any unforeseen delays, they should be back within eighteen hours.

While Spock began entering the optimal coordinates into two tricorders, she refreshed Sulu and Chekov on how to properly operate the devices. As they donned the suits and started running checks on them, she began packing water, ration tubes, and other necessary supplies into the empty bags the environmental suits had been in.

Lastly, she opened the case of hand weapons and issued them two phasers plus extra energy cartridges. Weapons were standard issue on any away mission, but thinking about the Nausicaan message and Starfleet's warning about the Orion Syndicate made her nervous.

Spock had suggested that he was concerned not only whether they would be found in time, but _who_ would find them. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she removed a hand phaser for herself and clipped it onto her utility belt.

Eight hours ago, they were hoping to ace a final exam: now Nemechek was dead, the shuttle was in shambles, and they were sitting ducks, praying to be found by their own people before they ran out of breathable oxygen or froze to death.

 _How had it gone so bad so quickly?_

She could tell from the overwhelmed looks on her fellow cadets' faces that they were feeling the same way. Meanwhile, their de facto commander felt nothing. _Literally, nothing._

Spock gave them the tricorders and communicators and quizzed them on their mission. Minutes later, they were gone and Spock sealed the hatch behind them. She wasn't aware she was staring at him until he turned to face her. He handed her a communicator.

"Cadet Uhura, continue moving supplies from the engineering compartment. Perform radio checks with the away team every thirty minutes and log according to Starfleet regulations."

"Aye sir," she replied, trying to swallow her growing anxiety.

He opened the remains of the med kit and began disassembling components with his good hand while she retreated to engineering. As she started gingerly rearranging items, she allowed herself a brief moment of pessimism.

What if Sulu and Chekov didn't make it back? What if Starfleet's intelligence reports were correct and the Orion Syndicate found them? She would die here, all alone. Well, not _all_ alone. She glanced through the doorway at Spock and observed him tinkering with medical components.

If she died here, her last hours would be spent with the automaton in the forward cabin. When she imagined a list of people she'd want to spend her final moments with, Commander Spock was pretty far down. _Very far down._ If she was really being honest with herself, there were probably several childhood pets that would outrank him. Maybe not the goldfish her father had gotten her at the fair when she was six, but definitely all the mammalian ones.

She caught herself before sliding too far down the path to despair. They weren't going to die here. Sure, things were bad, but there was always hope.

Still, eighteen hours alone with Mr. Personality in a tense life or death situation was a _long_ time. He looked up and noticed her staring at him and cocked his head. She resumed her work with awkward fervor.

 _No, this wasn't going to be weird at all._


	4. Dormant

Moving the remainder of the supplies from the engineering compartment was no easy task with broken ribs, but thankfully Chekov and Sulu had moved the larger items.

They had departed over an hour ago and she'd checked in with them twice. Things were going as planned, but it was still early yet.

"Is there anything else, sir?" she asked, crossing her arms and stopping in front of Commander Spock.

He was still sitting on the floor by her overturned console, attempting to fix the bone knitter. It was clearly awkward and slow going with only one arm. He looked at the stack of supplies sitting against the wall carefully, and said, "No, cadet. Seal off the engineering compartment."

"Aye sir," she said grimly.

When she'd done as he asked, she watched the shuttle's power signature climb steadily and smiled. _They weren't dead yet._

She checked the time: twenty more minutes until she'd need to check in with Sulu and Chekov. She looked around for some other task to occupy herself when she narrowly dodged an errant spring flying toward her face.

"Would you like some help, Commander?" she sighed, looking over to Spock.

He had the bone knitter clenched between his knees to hold it in place while he reassembled the energy components. He looked at her and then back to the bone knitter.

"I do not think-" he began.

"I don't know why you think it's better to do that on your own," she interrupted.

" _I do not think_ it would be logical to deny your assistance, cadet," he finished, looking at her in a way that seemed too sardonic for a Vulcan.

She grimaced in embarrassment. She'd always been a hothead who spoke her mind. She'd become a lot more tactful in her methods and far more skilled in picking her battles than she'd been when she was younger, but clearly she still wasn't perfect.

She quickly joined him on the floor and took the bone knitter. He also handed her a tiny copper coil and a pair of tweezers, and began walking her through the microassembly of the bone knitter's components. It was tricky work and she wished she had better lighting, but Spock was patient with her, and even helped her comb the floor when she dropped a silicon buffer barely larger than a grain of sand.

It was a bit strange working in such close proximity to him, but the delicate nature of the work and the miniscule components demanded it. Ten minutes later, she put the exterior casing on and held her breath. She flipped it on. _Still not working._

" _Ugh_ ," she groaned, making a snarling face at the medical device and leaning back against the wall forcefully.

She winced from hitting her ribs and fought back the growing frustration welling inside of her.

"Your anger will not mend the bone knitter," he said, looking at her with a slightly raised eyebrow.

"I know that. _Sir_ ," she said carefully. "But we _do_ need to get it working. If we don't get that tourniquet off of your arm in the next four to five hours, you're going to lose the limb."

"I am aware, cadet, but your negative emotions will repair neither the bone knitter nor my arm at an increased rate."

She bit her tongue and dismissed the idea of smacking him. Of course, he had said it himself: they had about a fifty percent chance of dying here, which also meant if she _did_ slap him, there was a fifty percent chance no one would ever find out.

She began to chuckle but quickly suppressed it with a slight shake of her head. She detected a microexpression of curiosity on his face. They reached for the small screwdriver simultaneously, and when her index finger brushed the knuckles of his right hand, he instantly recoiled.

" _Sir_? Are you ok?" she asked in alarm.

"'Ok' is a very imprecise term," he said briskly.

" _I_ \- yeah, never mind," she replied, rolling her eyes and picking up the screwdriver. "Actually, _no_. What is it? Do I _bother_ you? Did I do something wrong? _Sir_?"

"Vulcans simply do not prefer to be touched," he said.

She looked at him incredulously.

" _Really_? You _tackled_ me earlier," she retorted. "I can't think of many species that 'prefer' to be thrown on the ground."

"It was necessary for the preservation of your life," he explained.

She was thinking back on the crash before he even began his answer. It was difficult to remember what exactly had happened in the chaos of the shuttle's final moments. Her eyes darted over to the ejection tube and it quickly dawned on her. _He had saved her life._

She had been leaning up against the ejection tube from the force of the gravity. A support beam in the engineering compartment had come through from behind the adjacent wall, and if she had been standing there when they crashed, it would have broken her neck or maybe crushed her skull.

She was alive because he had grabbed her with his right arm and pulled her onto the floor and shielded them both from the falling ceiling panels with his left. His decision had shattered his left arm, but it had saved her life.

She didn't know what to say, and was trying to formulate a way to thank him when he said, "Cadet, perhaps you could stop daydreaming and focus on the task."

 _He thought she was daydreaming?_

"Well, _obviously_ me touching you just now was an accident," she said, waving the screwdriver unceremoniously. "I wasn't trying to hold your hand or anything."

"That is evident."

"But I'm sorry," she replied. "It _was_ an accident. And thank you."

"Why are you thanking me?"

"For saving my life," she mumbled.

"You are welcome."

She returned her attention to the bone knitter, listening to Spock's instructions and doing her best to temper her emotions. She found her mind drifting readily, usually in Spock's direction.

He was so naturally boring and unexcitable. What exactly would it take to piss him off? Frustrate him? Make him smile? Make him _cry_? Were those things even _possible_? She tried to imagine him laughing at a joke or tearing up at a funeral, and she just couldn't.

She wondered what he was like as a child. As a _baby_. Surely not even Vulcans were _born_ logical.

What had he been like as a teenager? Were Vulcan teens moody and hormonal too? If he had gone to any of her schools, she imagined he probably would have been _viciously_ picked on. Maybe that was one advantage to the stark Vulcan philosophy: bullying and teasing were almost certainly considered "illogical."

"Cadet Uhura?"

" _Hmm_?" She snapped back to the present.

"The casing?" he explained, offering the round, cylindrical component to her with his good hand.

"Oh, _yeah_ , sorry Commander," she said, gingerly taking the small metal backing from his hand so as to avoid touching him again.

She noticed her hands were trembling slightly and wondered why. It was probably just some combination of being hungry, tired, injured, stressed, and working with these _tiny_ damn components. Still, she hoped he hadn't noticed.

When she finished replacing the inner casing, she handed the mostly-assembled bone knitter to him.

"I'm overdue to contact the away team," she said, standing up and flipping the communicator open.

 _Her hands were still shaking. How annoying._

Sulu and Chekov were on schedule and doing well. She noted it in the log and checked the shuttle's power usage.

"We're at forty-one hours remaining, Commander," she declared.

 _They were consuming power faster than he'd calculated._

"Adjust environmental settings to seventy-five percent," he ordered.

Her fingers swiped across the terminal and she frowned. They would have slightly less breathable oxygen, but they weren't exactly doing calisthenics either. Of course, it was also going to be getting a little chilly with the temperature controls lowered but thankfully, blankets were the one thing this garbage scow of a shuttle seemed to have in good supply. She must have moved two dozen of them out of engineering, and they were currently stacked by the compartment door they'd sealed off.

"Power is back up to fifty hours, sir," she said, as she returned to the floor next to him.

With his good hand, he'd managed to get two of the four screws into the backing of the bone knitter while she'd been occupied.

"Here," she said, holding out her hand expectantly to take the screwdriver and the bone knitter to finish the task more efficiently.

She sensed a sort of apprehension in him, and wondered if he was really so proud that he wouldn't accept help. It didn't seem very logical. It took nearly a minute for her to artfully work the tiny screws into place and when she was done, she set the screwdriver down with a measure of trepidation.

"Here goes nothing," she said, toggling the button to turn it on.

It crackled and she felt a slight humming in her palm.

" _Yes_ ," she said gleefully under her breath.

 _No more broken ribs. No more looking at Spock's grisly wreckage of an arm._

She then had a horrifying realization. He wasn't going to be able to do this on his own.

 _Oh no. Oh gross._

She wouldn't have called herself _squeamish_ , exactly, but she'd learned in her first aid course last semester that there were some things she didn't handle as well as she wished. Even when they were just simulations, things like arterial blood sprays and protruding bones had always made her a bit queasy. She hadn't even _really_ looked when she put the tourniquet on his arm.

"Perhaps you should turn it off to conserve energy, cadet," he said.

She flipped the switch on the bone knitter and blushed slightly.

"How do you want to do this?" she asked.

He stood and looked around, then took a seat at Chekov's damaged computer terminal. He draped his arm across the broken screen, and looked back at her.

"Did you see any anesthetics in the med kit?" she asked.

"Regrettably, no," he replied.

"Well, I realize synthesizing stuff is out of the question, but I saw some sedatives earlier, if you-"

"No, cadet. It would be irresponsible to forgo consciousness for my own comfort under the circumstances."

"You're seriously going to let me do this without any meds at all?" she asked in disbelief.

"Yes, I believe that is the only logical inference you could draw," he replied.

 _Was that Vulcan sarcasm?_

She frowned.

 _Maybe he should be nicer to the person who was about to be in a position to cause him significant agony._

"Yeah, _ok_ ," she said, moving toward him. "It's _your_ arm. _Sir_."

He began pulling back the sleeve of his shirt and she tried to act naturally, but she was finding it increasingly difficult to fight back the urge to look away or vomit.

"This might be more efficient if you could assist me," he said, looking up at her patiently.

 _Oh,_ now _he asked for help._

"Are you sure you don't mind me touching you?" she asked, trying to keep the mocking in her voice to an appropriate minimum.

"It seems unavoidable," he replied.

 _Damn. A small part of her had hoped he would have said "yes."_

She took a deep breath and started rolling back the cuff. She could almost feel the pain emanating from him but he sat there without complaint.

"Maybe it would be better if I cut the sleeve?" she offered, reaching behind her to sort through a large hard case of engineering supplies.

She located a pair of engineering sheers that worked remarkably well on cloth. She cut upward toward his elbow and uttered a slight whimper when she revealed the actual fracture. It was _grotesque_.

"Cadet?" he asked, his placid face examining her. His face was so calm, like he was sitting for afternoon tea.

"Let's just say there's a reason I'm in communications and not medicine," she mumbled.

"I presume you have taken the full semester first aid course?" he asked.

"Yeah, but I've never actually done anything like _this_ ," she explained, waving to his arm.

"No one has ever done anything until they have," he replied. "I am confident you will perform adequately."

His voice sounded slightly clipped and she could tell he was in an extraordinary amount of pain.

"Yeah, let's just get this done," she said, trying to steel herself for what was coming.

 _Chapter 12, Section 9b of the Starfleet Comprehensive First Aid Manual: Setting a Compound Fracture. Set the bone. Check for fragments and chips. Repair blood vessels. Knit the bone. Seal the laceration._

"Are you _sure_ you don't want anything? Not even something to bite down on?" she asked.

"I am certain, cadet," he replied.

"Ok," she said, feeling the blood drain from her face as she whispered, "Set the bone, check for fragments. Repair-"

She grabbed his arm more firmly than she probably meant to and quickly forced the two parts of his forearm into a straight line. He made a strange, throaty, guttural sound but didn't scream.

 _Check for fragments, check for fragments, check for fragments…_

" _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"_ she yelled, working as quickly as she could.

His skin was frighteningly white. She grabbed the bone knitter and quickly set to work patching the damaged vessels and bone fragments. He began to sway in the chair and his eyes fluttered. He leaned on her and his torso against her broken ribs made her want to scream.

She kept going.

She was nearly done when he completely lost consciousness. He slumped against her as she awkwardly finished sealing the wound. When she was done, she checked his pulse.

 _Still alive._

She breathed a sigh of relief but then quickly wondered what to do. She tried to pull him out of the chair to lay him on the ground but he was absurdly heavy, and even slight strain to her ribs caused her agony.

It took some work and caused some pain, but she managed to wrestle him to the floor while taking great care to protect his head and neck. She laid him on his back and checked his breathing and pulse again anxiously.

It was hard pushing back against the fear because for the first time her in life, she felt absolutely, truly, completely _alone_.

" _Oh please wake up_ ," she whispered, feeling the sting of tears in her eyes.


	5. Delicate

_Relax. Remember the training._

 _He passed out from shock. Treat for shock. He was breathing and his airway was clear. No obvious risk of vomiting. Check._

She grabbed two blankets to elevate his legs and cover him. His skin was pale and shockingly cold.

She began tearing apart the med kit for a tricorder. Her hands were still covered in his blood and it was getting everywhere, but that seemed like a problem for later. She took a deep breath to try to keep from shaking as she flipped through the preinstalled files to select for Vulcan physiology.

 _Just like in class. Stay calm._

Her heart began to slow but her hands were still shaking as she scanned it over his chest. His blood pressure was… _high_? That didn't make sense.

He shuddered. In total, he wasn't unconscious for more than a minute, but it had felt like an eternity. When his eyes opened, he stared passively up at the ceiling.

" _Commander_?" she shouted, turning the tricorder off.

His eyes blinked and he rolled his head to look at her.

"Commander, do you know where you are?" she insisted.

He didn't respond.

 _That was ok, right? Temporary confusion was normal after loss of consciousness. Keep talking to him._

He looked back at the ceiling and gripped his left arm instinctively. He was probably going to have a scar and it was almost certainly going to hurt for a while. She reached across his body to loosen the tourniquet and he flinched.

"Sir, I'm just going to remove the tourniquet, ok?"

His eyes moved along his arm from his tattered sleeve to the band constricting his upper bicep.

"Yes," he breathed, laying his head back down on the floor.

"Commander? Do you know where you are?" she asked again.

"The _Dalton II_ ," he responded with slightly slurred speech.

He began trying to sit up but she held her hand over his chest to stop him.

"You just _fainted_ , sir," she explained sternly.

"Yes," he mumbled.

She sensed a change in his demeanor that seemed unnerving. She didn't know him well, which made it even more difficult to determine if this was normal behavior.

"How long… was I unconscious?" he asked tautly.

"I think you were out for maybe a minute?" she replied. "It's not surprising, after what I just did to you. And you lost some blood before we put the tourniquet on."

He attempted to sit up again. She glared at him and said, "You should stay down for a little while. It's logical, _yes_? You're not going to be very _useful_ if you faint again, right?"

She raised her eyebrows at him expectantly, and he glanced in her direction. She could see his eyes were beginning to focus more readily. She watched him closely, and for a brief moment their eyes locked.

It almost felt like a challenge, and the longer they continued to stare at one another, the stranger she began to feel. She didn't yield.

"Nor will you, if you do not treat you own injuries," he replied.

" _Huh_?" she replied, slightly choking from the realization that she'd been holding her breath.

"You should tend to your own injuries," he repeated, breaking eye contact at last to glance down at her left leg.

She'd been afraid to look too closely at any part of her anatomy to until then. Starfleet standard issue flight suits were fire and heat resistant, but not fire _proof_. She knew her left arm had been burned: her flight suit was singed along her forearm and the skin underneath was tender to the touch.

Her leg had gotten the worst of it though. Her trousers were melted into the outer part of her thigh, and as she surveyed the damage, the pain seemed to increase tenfold. It had been nice flying high on endorphins and ignorance, but it seemed like _that_ was now over.

Her head began to spin a bit, and she reached out and steadied herself on Chekov's workstation. She gritted her teeth and willed herself to ignore it. When the dizziness subsided, she took deliberate steps back toward the remnants of the med kit and extracted the dermal regenerator.

She sat down carefully and glanced over at Spock. He had pulled himself into a sitting position and was facing away from her. She rolled her eyes.

 _Why couldn't he just follow one simple instruction and take it easy for at least ten minutes?_

She tested the dermal regenerator and was relieved to find it in working order. She tried pushing up her sleeve to assess the burns on her arm, but the stiff fabric barely budged, and the irritation it caused to the burn underneath made her wince.

She frowned, realizing the best way to get at it was to open the top half of her flight suit. She unbuttoned the front of it and began trying to wriggle out of her right sleeve. The pain in her ribs made it awkward but after a few false starts, she was successful.

It wasn't _pretty_ , but it wasn't awful either. The flesh on the top part of her left arm was an angry shade of red, but nothing the dermal regenerator couldn't handle. She gently palpated her ribs and grimaced.

Her eyes darted in Spock's direction: he was still sitting facing the opposite wall and was looking downward and massaging his arm. She kept her eyes on him as she began to pull up her black undershirt to see how bad her ribs were. She peeked down and saw purple bruises were already beginning to form.

She gently stroked her ribs again, feeling goose bumps prick her skin at the sensation. She applied more pressure and noted how tender everything was from her hip to her armpit.

She struggled to remember human anatomy from her first aid class, but truthfully she hadn't put as much effort into it as she had her command and linguistics courses. Everyone had said first aid was an easy filler class that would look good in her personnel file. She _had_ learned a lot, but she never actually thought she'd use any of it.

She pulled her shirt up further and craned her neck to assess how far the damage went around her left side.

"Cadet Uhura, the bone knitter-" Spock began.

Her head shot up to see him turning to offer her the medical instrument and she yelped, ripping her shirt back down and gasping from the pain generated by the sudden movement. " _Don't look_!"

Spock whipped back around quickly.

"My apologies," he said stiffly.

She could feel herself blushing furiously, and she took a deep breath despite the aggravation it caused to her ribs.

 _Of all the people to see her with her shirt pulled up around her neck._

She swiftly set to work with the dermal regenerator, tracing slowly around her forearm and wondering if it would do anything for the burning in her cheeks caused by mortification.

The communicator chirped and she glanced at it anxiously. Without saying a word, Spock carefully stood, picked it up, and responded.

"Spock here," he replied.

"Sir, there appears to be some kind of anomaly ahead," Chekov's voice crackled through the communicator. "But our tricorders aren't registering anything unusual."

"Standby while I analyze atmospheric conditions with the shuttle's computer," Spock replied.

She noticed her heart pick up speed while she waited for an answer. She tried to focus on her arm: she had healed most of the external damaged tissue, leaving only minor residual swelling. She set the dermal regenerator down and watched Spock.

His eyebrows furrowed a fraction of a millimeter, and he flipped the communicator back open.

"Scans show a two percent increase in vacuum fluctuations from the nebula," he replied. "There is insufficient information to estimate if they will be emitted, or when," he replied.

"How should we proceed, sir?"

"Continue your mission. I shall continue to monitor the nebula. Increase frequency of communication checks to every fifteen minutes. Spock out."

He closed the communicator and went back to analyzing data on the terminal. She had about a hundred questions on the tip of her tongue, and was deciding where to start when he spoke.

"Have you completed treating your injuries?" he asked.

He didn't take his eyes from the terminal but continued to shift from screen to screen. She couldn't help but notice that he wasn't using his left hand.

"No, sir," she answered impatiently.

He slightly tilted his face in her direction and paused. He was clearly choosing his words carefully.

"Do you require assistance?" he asked slowly.

Requiring and wanting were two different things. She didn't really _want_ his help, especially if it involved looking at parts of her body that were normally concealed by clothing. Yet she knew she would be unable to hold the bone knitter steady at the awkward angle she'd need to hold it at in order to use it on herself.

She pursed her lips and stared blankly ahead.

"Cadet Uhura? Do you-"

" _Yes_ ," she said clumsily. "With my ribs. I think I need help with knitting my ribs."

She vaguely sensed through his Vulcan demeanor the same trepidation that she'd also felt minutes ago. He had offered his help to be polite and expected her to refuse, but she hadn't. Maybe they weren't _completely_ different people after all.

She hoisted herself to a standing position and gingerly stretched her torso out. The top half of her flight suit hung down around her waist, and she tried to ignore her budding anxiety. She couldn't see an easy way of doing this without taking off her undershirt.

Spock initiated the shuttle's automatic alerts to listen for the computer's analysis of the nebula. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then stood mechanically and walked over to her without making eye contact.

She half-closed her eyes and held out the bone knitter. He took it cautiously and nearly dropped it, and she looked away. Seeing how uncomfortable he seemed to be only made it that much worse.

 _Maybe she'd be fine with broken ribs._

Seconds ticked by and they both stood without moving or speaking until they broke the silence at the same time.

"Do you-" she started.

"Perhaps you should-" he began to ask.

 _Why did it have to be_ him _?_

She noticed he wasn't looking directly at her: he was looking at the wall just over her shoulder.

 _Was he embarrassed too? Did Vulcans get embarrassed?_

"Look, I get that this is weird and neither one of us is really excited about it," she huffed. "But let's just get it over with."

"Perhaps you should turn around," he said.

His voice sounded strangely hollow. She complied.

"Where is the location of the fracture?" he asked.

"Here," she said, brushing her fingers over the lower left side of her ribs. "I don't think there's any displacement. I can't be sure how far up the breaks go, but I'm certain-"

"The bone knitter is an adaptable and indiscriminate tool," he replied, interrupting her.

 _That was true._ It really was a remarkable piece of equipment that would rapidly stimulate osteoblasts and osteoclasts where they were needed without harming healthy bone tissue. Any idiot could use one with minimal training.

"Well, I guess start here," she said, slightly lifting her shirt and touching her fingers to the bottom of her ribcage.

She'd never broken a bone before, so she wondered how badly this was going to hurt until he turned on the bone knitter and she got an answer. It wasn't _painful_ , exactly, but it was far from comfortable. It felt like there was a warm vibration coming from within her, and a dull ache quickly set in at the site of the break. She closed her eyes and inched her shirt upward as he worked.

She began to swoon slightly, and Spock caught her from behind. She felt a strange rush of… _something_. She gasped and instantly tried to stand on her own.

 _Was she really that big of a baby that she was going to faint?_

She cringed at the thought and set her jaw in determination.

"I do not believe it is necessary to reduce your oxygen intake during this procedure," he said.

Only then did she realize she had been holding her breath.

"Yeah, sorry," she mumbled panting slightly.

"Shall I continue?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, frowning slightly and closing her eyes.

What ensued was easily the most uncomfortable five minutes of her life, physically and otherwise. Spock clearly did his best to avoid making any physical contact, which was more than fine by her, but eventually she had to lift her shirt up over her shoulder for him to access the breaks located further up along her ribcage.

Eventually he stopped and she caught her breath. She started to pull her shirt down and was about to mumble her thanks when he said, "I believe your injury extends further."

She palpated the area to the side her left breast. _He was probably right._ She pursed her lips and lifted her shirt again. He didn't move.

" _Oh here_ ," she barked, grimacing and reaching behind her back to unclasp her bra.

She held the left cup of her bra in place while he resumed working and wondered if it was possible to die of mortification. The linguist in her wanted to be amused at the Latin roots of the word 'mortification,' which literally implied _death_ , but she wasn't in a mood to laugh. She draped her left arm over her head and shuddered when the tips of his fingers made contact with her skin.

"I apologize," he said quickly, pausing for a moment.

"It's _fine_ ," she said flatly, "just finish."

It took several more minutes for him to complete his task. He powered down the bone knitter and began to back away, and she awkwardly fumbled to rehook her bra. Her face was still hot with embarrassment. She tucked her shirt back into her flight suit and started pulling the top half of it back on.

"Thanks," she said crisply, turning to look at him but unable to look past his feet.

"You are welcome," he responded.

Her eyes trailed upwards and met his. He seemed… _off_. Their eye contact lasted only a few moments, and was interrupted by the chirp of the communicator.

Spock swiftly answered it, and she felt her blood run cold at the words of the voice on the other end.

"Commander, we have a _really_ big problem," Sulu said.


	6. Darkness

"Our suits are losing power, and _fast_ ," Sulu said.

She could hear the panic in his voice through the increasing static of the communicator. She was listening so closely that when the shuttle's computer began an automatic alarm, she jumped in surprise.

"Power down your suits and all equipment, _now_ ," Spock ordered. "Shelter in place. Conserve residual oxygen. I'm reading a-"

The lights flickered in the cabin, and then the power in the shuttle failed. It was pitch black. Her first instinct was to scream, but she forced herself to take a slow breath. She held her hands out and tried to feel her way to the back wall of the cabin to better orient herself.

" _Com_ -" Sulu's voice cut out through the noise on the channel. " _Command_ \- _we_ \- _go to_ -"

"Cadet Sulu, power down your communicator. I will contact you when the vacuum fluctuations cease. It is vital you conserve energy."

There was a pause, and he added, "Cadet Sulu, _acknowledge_."

He tried twice more to transmit his orders but the away team did not respond. She heard the click of the communicator when he closed it.

"Cadet Uhura, ensure all of the supplementary equipment is powered off, particularly the portable communications and medical equipment."

"Commander, what's going on?" she asked, searching on her hands and knees for the bone knitter.

"The nebula is emitting powerful vacuum fluctuations that are interfering with energy use. The quantum shifts in the-"

"I don't need the _physics_ , I just need to know what to expect," she interrupted briskly, making a face at him in the dark.

"We must turn everything off," he said neutrally.

"Everything _is_ off," she replied. "In case you didn't notice, it's kind of dark in here."

"The fluctuations are drawing energy at a faster rate than the devices themselves, which is causing them to malfunction. Even if they do not _appear_ to be on, they are acting as a conduit for the fluctuations to siphon energy from their available power sources. We are losing our remaining energy at a rate that is nineteen times faster than through conventional use, a rate which is continuing to rise as the vacuum fluctuations increase."

She moved more quickly, trying to recall where everything was from memory. Her hands groped in the dark and found the bone knitter, and she ran her fingers along the instrument until she was sure it was in the "off" position.

"How long is this going to last?"

"If my calculations are correct, I approximate the fluctuations will last no longer than twenty-eight minutes," he replied.

 _Then why not just say "twenty-eight minutes" and skip all the fancy words?_

"Will Sulu and Chekov's suits hold oxygen that long?" she asked.

"If they calculated the input and flow cycle correctly, yes," he responded.

She grimaced and wondered just how long the away team could hold their breath in the event that anyone's math was off.

"Cadet Uhura, I require your assistance," he said with a faint and startling hint of urgency.

"Yeah, sure," she answered, crawling over to the terminal.

She lurched when she accidentally found what she thought was his thigh with her hand in the dark, but he seemed unfazed.

"I need you to disconnect the transition element from the main circuit," he said.

She had moderate theoretical knowledge of power supply, but had limited hands on experience with non-communications equipment.

" _What_?" she stammered, wondering why he needed her and how she was going to recognize what that was in the dark when she had a fifty-fifty chance of even identifying it in broad daylight.

He didn't reply, but she sensed he was reaching out toward her. He found her right shoulder and traced his hand down her arm until he met her right hand. She felt a strange sensation when their hands touched: it was almost warm and comforting and made her feel… _she wasn't sure_.

She shook her head in disbelief. He pulled her arm slightly, and she tried to duck under where she thought the terminal was. She had been overly conservative in her spatial reasoning, and slammed her forehead into his face instead.

"Ah, _sorry_ ," she hissed.

"Here," he said with a grunt, ignoring her apology and touching her hand to a port in the floor.

She understood why he needed her. _Her_ hand barely fit; there was no way _his_ would.

"What am I looking for?"

"A narrow, rectangular module approximately four centimeters long. It should be the only component matching that description."

She felt him trying to retreat out of the confined space, which made her grateful, until he smashed his face into hers. Their lips actually touched awkwardly, and she squealed and wrenched her face in the opposite direction.

 _Just focus on the task. It was an accident. A creepy. Icky. Awful. Accident._

She shuddered and stretched out her fingers, looking for anything like what he described until she was certain she had it.

" _Got it_ ," she said, speaking more loudly than she intended. "What do I do?"

"Pull up it upward."

She did as he asked and nothing seemed to happen.

"I did it. Now what?"

"We wait," he replied.

She backed out of the small space under the terminal awkwardly, stood quickly, and tripped over his feet. As she started to fall, she felt his hand on the back of her thigh, which steadied her, but also made her jump.

" _Sorry_. I'm sorry. I can't see _anything_ ," she groaned. "I'm really sorry."

"It is illogical to apologize for your inability to see in complete darkness," he said calmly.

She felt him brush against her ankle, and she began to get the sense he was sitting down with his back against the rear wall of the cabin. Her hands stretched out and reached the wall, and she traced her hands down it until she found his shoulder. She realized she was standing between his legs, and she was grateful he couldn't see the look of horror on her face in the dark.

Unless of course Vulcans had some freak kind of night vision she didn't know about. Given he'd pseudo-kissed her a few minutes ago, she doubted it.

She clasped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing in embarrassment, and tried to gingerly step over his left thigh, but tripped again and kicked him.

His not-so-subtle shout gave her a _really_ good guess as to exactly where her foot had landed.

" _Oh no_ ," she squeaked. " _Oh my God_. I am _so_ sorry. Commander? _I'm sorry_."

"Perhaps you could move to another location," he said with a strange hint of discomfort in his voice.

"Right, _yeah_ ," she replied quickly, taking a step backwards this time and side stepping over his calf.

She put her back on the wall and bent at the knees, sliding down into a sitting position next to him. She bit her lip anxiously.

"Again, I'm really, _really_ sorry. Are you ok?" she asked.

"I was not _permanently_ injured," he responded.

She leaned her head against the wall and heard the dull thud of the sheet metal. For a wild moment, she wondered how many points she was going to lose on this exam for kicking her observer-controller in the testicles. She stifled a laugh.

"Cadet?"

"I don't mean to laugh. It's just, _I don't know_. A natural response to being horribly embarrassed?" she admitted. "It really isn't funny. I'm very sorry for what just happened."

"You have made your contrition quite explicit. I accept your apology. Continuing to render apologies will diminish their value," he replied.

"Well, but I'm also sorry I touched you," she said awkwardly. "You know, _earlier_. On your leg. And then on your shoulder. Because you said you don't like to be touched."

"It was unintentional," he replied, almost cutting the end of her sentence off.

She rolled her head away from him and closed her eyes despite the darkness.

"I also wish to apologize for touching you in an inappropriate manner," he said after a short period of silence. "I trust you understand it was accidental under the present circumstances."

"Yeah, _obviously_ ," she agreed.

A heavy silence settled between them and she found her eyes wanting to remain closed. Her sense of time was becoming skewed, but she felt sure she hadn't slept in nearly two days. Her ribs still ached slightly, and the burn on her leg had yet to be treated. The cabin was beginning to grow quite cold without the environmental controls, and she considered trying to find one of the blankets.

She worried about the away team, wondering what it must be like to be completely out in the elements and cut off from the shuttle. She thought of Nemechek, lying dead under a fire blanket at the front of the cabin just a few meters away. She didn't know him that well, and now she never would. If she made it out of this alive, she would see his parents at the funeral. If she died here along with Nemechek, she thought of her own parents at her own funeral, and felt a spark of tears in her eyes.

From the moment they'd crashed, she'd been too focused on surviving to stop and think too critically about the reality of their situation. But _now_ , huddled against the wall of the torn shuttle, blind in the dark, tired and in pain, and with only Commander Spock for company, the full weight of her emotions began to emerge.

 _She was afraid._

"Cadet Uhura, do you recall the location of the shuttle's receivers?"

" _Huh_?" she asked, snapping out of her misery.

"The communications receivers. The transmitting amplifiers were located in the external starboard hull and were damaged beyond repair in the initial impact, but if we can modify the receivers, we may be able to at least intercept signals."

Being able to hear space communications traffic but being unable to talk back felt pretty depressing. She closed her eyes and thought of the layout of this unfamiliar shuttle.

"I'm going to guess they're probably in the front of the cabin," she replied. "When we get power back, I'll take a look."

"Thank you, cadet."

"Speaking of which," she added, "how will we know when these vacuum fluctuations have ended? If everything's been manually disconnected, nothing's going to magically turn back on when this is over."

"I intend to test for the presence of fluctuations with my grading PADD in approximately twenty minutes, as it is a non-essential piece of equipment," he explained.

 _Simple, but smart._

She didn't want to sit alone in the dark with her thoughts, but didn't exactly know how to hold a casual conversation with Spock either. She rolled her head back in his direction. She couldn't see him, but she could sense he was aware that she was looking at him.

"Is there something else you wish to discuss, cadet?"

"I don't know," she replied slowly. " _Anything_?"

"Could you specify?"

 _This was pointless._ She didn't really _want_ to get to know him, and she sensed if she started in with questions about his likes and dislikes, childhood hopes and current work, it would only end up sounding like an interrogation.

Being in total darkness was a bit creepy. Then she remembered the one thing she'd forgotten to worry about recently. _The Nausicaans. The Orion Syndicate._

"Commander, who do you think did this? I mean, set the mine?"

"It would be illogical to speculate too broadly," he replied. "Given the last transmission about the Orion Syndicate and the Nausicaan transmission you intercepted, either party seems a reasonable candidate."

"Why would Starfleet Academy give us this route for a training mission if they even _suspected_ these people were here?"

"Current intelligence reports showed no evidence of recent activity," he answered.

"What about _past_ activity?" she asked.

"This area has been a nexus for a number of criminal organizations for more than two centuries," he responded.

"What about _recent_ past activity?" she sighed.

"That information is classified and above your level of clear-," he began.

" _Really_?" she interrupted. "We're smack in the middle of this 'classified' information. I'm not asking for the codes to the Federation protection grid, I just want to understand what happened."

"As I was saying, given the circumstances, it seems illogical to withhold the basic information from you. I am not certain of what has happened here, but less than twelve months ago, there was moderate activity of the Orion Syndicate in this area."

It had been two years since her course on geographical politics and terrorism, but she was beginning to piece it together. She knew disagreements between the Nausicaans and the Klingons were escalating, which might have forced some factions of Nausicaan pirates closer to Federation territory.

"Do you think we walked into the middle of a turf war between the Nausicaans and the Orion Syndicate?"

"It is a possibility," he replied. "But one of many. As I said, it would be illogical to speculate further."

"But it _would_ be logical to prepare ourselves in case either one of them happens to find us here," she urged.

"Aside from hand weapons, we are defenseless," he said simply. "There is little we can do to prepare."

" _You know sir,_ you have a really amazing way of making an already bad situation sound _so_ much worse," she retorted.

"It is merely a fact. I fail to see the logic in shielding oneself from the truth, no matter how unpleasant."

"Look, I get that everyone dies, but I'm not eager to do it today," she growled. "Or tomorrow. So please spare me the philosophy lesson. _Sir_."

"Philosophy is inherent in all situations. And a chief tenet Vulcan philosophy holds that a long and prosperous life is the most universally desirable goal for any sentient species."

" _Ok_?" she asked in frustration.

"In summary, I do not wish to die either," he explained. "Furthermore, it is reasonable to conclude that neither the Nausciaans nor Orion Syndicate wish to risk outright war with the Federation, and thus they would be unlikely to kill us."

"Just capture us and hold us for ransom then?" she retorted darkly.

"Precisely."

She stared at him open-mouthed in the dark.

"What would I do without you to cheer me up, _Commander Spock_?" she laughed weakly.


	7. Discussion

She had been starting to doze when she saw a blinding flash of light through her eyelids and felt Spock stirring beside her.

 _His PADD had turned on: the vacuum fluctuations were over._

Spock stood, and she heard the familiar sound of the communicator flipping open.

"Spock to away team," he said patiently.

The only reply was a very tense period of silence. She cautiously stood and waited with anticipation. He repeated his transmission, and still received no response. She felt her heart beating in her throat and struggled to remain calm.

"Cadet Uhura, reconnect the transition element below the work station," Spock said casually.

She shuffled slowly to the computer terminal with her hands outstretched and soon found it, and then fumbled around in the dark for nearly a minute trying to relocate the part she'd disconnected earlier. Her mind was understandably not on her work.

"Spock to away team, acknowledge," he called again.

" _Answer the damn call_ ," she hissed under her breath.

 _Still nothing._

Her fingers felt slow and numb, and she was becoming aware just how cold it had grown in the cabin without the environmental controls to stabilize the temperature. The residual oxygen was also falling, and they would need to restore power soon. She took a deep breath and tried to push herself to focus.

Her concentration was abandoned when she heard a crackle of static on the other end of the communicator.

" _Com- we- ock- loss_ ," said the voice on the other end.

The quality was so terrible she couldn't even tell whether it was Sulu or Chekov, despite the young Russian's thick accent. It didn't matter: they were _alive_ , or at least one of them was.

"Repeat transmission, over," Spock said, then added, "Cadet Uhura, please work quickly."

" _Right_ ," she said briskly, too overjoyed to hear from the away team to feel annoyed at his complete lack of relief.

She found the slim component and pushed it down, and the power surged back through the cabin. She shielded her eyes against the pain induced by the vibrant light.

"Cadet Uhura, continue to attempt to contact the away team," he said, handing her the communicator as he sat down at the workstation.

"Sulu, Chekov, _respond_ ," she said forcefully.

More static.

She watched over Spock's shoulder as he ran a diagnostic on the shuttle's remaining power reserves.

" _We- is- th- I_ ," answered the broken voice through the communicator.

She flipped the device over and popped the back casing off to temporarily disengage the transceiver.

" _Uhura, respond_ ," the voice said more clearly through the channel.

The quality of the transmission was still quite poor, but at least she could understand him. It was Sulu. She flipped the transceiver back on to transmit her own message.

"Away team, what is your status?" she asked, quickly shutting off the transceiver again to receive his response.

It was tedious, manually engaging and disengaging the transceiver component depending on whether she wanted to receive or transmit a message, but it was the quickest workaround she could think of off the top of her head.

"Our suits are down to sixty-nine percent power," Sulu answered. "Communicator died trying to contact you. Chekov tied in a power pack from one of the phasers."

"Chekov's with you?" she asked anxiously.

"Yeah, we're both fine. That storm drained a lot of power out of everything we have. Chekov figured out the discharges from the nebula had to be the cause, so we turned everything off. It's cold as hell and radiation is still off the charts out here. The suits are barely holding out. We can't take another hit like that."

"Standby," she replied, turning to Spock and saying, "Sir, please advise."

"If the suits preserved sixty-nine percent power, they can continue the mission without significant adjustment to their energy use. The quantum shifts will return to within normal parameters in the next three minutes, and the computer is not calculating any additional buildup large enough to lead to additional discharges in the immediate future."

After several more minutes of banter and updates with the away team, they resumed their mission to deploy the distress beacons. She set to work trying to modify the shuttle's receivers as Spock had asked, while he continued to assess the damage that the vacuum fluctuations had done to their power reserves.

The receivers were located toward the front of the cabin, just as she'd suspected. She had to step over Nemechek's body to get to them, and fought a losing battle to push the sadness out of her mind.

The air was positively _glacial_ , and if the humidity were higher, she felt certain she would be able to see her breath. Her fingers felt sluggish and foreign as she pried the cover from the wall to get to the communication equipment.

"If we don't suffocate, we'll freeze to death instead," she mumbled under her breath.

"It was necessary to adjust the environmental conditions to make the most efficient use of our remaining power," Spock replied simply. "We can survive despite the cold; we cannot survive without atmospheric oxygen."

 _Damn his Vulcan hearing._

"How bad was the damage, sir?" she asked neutrally, unsure if she really wanted the answer.

"We currently have thirty-one hours of power remaining," he said calmly.

 _They'd had more than_ fifty _before this all started. Nineteen hours closer to death._

"I have diverted power from temperature control to atmospheric stabilization to provide an additional two hours, therefore, the temperature will continue to fall. I recommend that you begin conserving your core body temperature."

She was about to ask if the 'additional two hours' meant they really had _thirty-three_ hours left, or if they originally had twenty-nine and were now at thirty-one because of his modifications. Then she realized it didn't really matter: they were dying by inches, and a few micrometers in either direction didn't make that much of a difference. Spock didn't seem to immediately pick up on her despair, because he continued.

"When recalculating for the energy loss, our probability of being located prior to power failure is thirty-"

"Sir," she interrupted, looking at him earnestly. "I appreciate that you're really good at math, but _knowing_ how long we have left to live isn't going to make us live _longer_ , is it?"

"No," he admitted. "I have updated the shuttle's log and have optimized our energy as efficiently as possible, and there is nothing more to do."

She stood, walked over to the stack of blankets, threw one around her shoulders, and handed another one to him.

"Then could you help me with the receiver, sir?" she asked with forced politeness, turning to rummage through the boxes of engineering equipment for a decoupler and hand spanner.

They worked in tandem for the next hour to pick up any nearby transmissions. He made modifications to the equipment while she monitored and calibrated the shuttle's software. He knew more about her field than she realized, and she was surprised when he showed her alternative methods for fine-tuning the digital scanner.

"What exactly _is_ your area of expertise, Commander Spock?"

"General science, with an emphasis in astrophysics and computer engineering," he replied.

" _Hmmm_."

"Was there a specific motive for your query?"

"No, not really," she admitted. "You just seem to have a pretty broad skillset. It's come in handy on this little 'vacation.'"

"Attempt to scan again," he replied, ignoring her sarcasm.

Finding the right modality to pick up a signal with damaged equipment, interference from the nebula, and no other frame of reference would be close to impossible. Without a working subspace detector, they were limited to radio technology that was centuries old: they might as well have two tin cans connected by a string.

"Sir, we've widened the bandwidth to the point that the noise is overpowering any signals we might intercept. We need to find a way to either fix the subspace detector or narrow the bandwidth. I _know_ that will limit the signal direction, but I was thinking, what if we had a program to selectively rotate through specific channels on the EM spectrum?"

His left eyebrow arced upward in a rare show of some emotion she couldn't pinpoint.

"Explain," he insisted.

She took a deep breath and looked at him curiously. She'd written such a program in her second year as a means of making her homework easier for her Detection Seminar. It hadn't been _cheating_ , exactly, but it still wasn't something she was enthusiastic about divulging to a member of the faculty.

It hadn't worked _perfectly_ , but it had been good enough. And Spock _was_ a computer scientist; maybe he could help fix the problems she'd never been able to work out. She'd have to rewrite the whole thing from memory and heavily modify it for Dark Age radio techniques, but theoretically, it _might_ work.

He joined her at the computer terminal and she began explaining her idea. He was shivering moderately, and observing his discomfort made her feel just that much colder. When she was done, she looked at him nervously for acceptance.

"My only recommendation is that it would seem prudent to focus more heavily on the infrared region, since that is where you detected the Nausicaan signal, as well as radar, as Starfleet still monitors those channels and also preferentially transmits on them for emergency purposes."

"So, you _approve_ of my plan?" she said in surprise.

"I think it is simple and efficient, and more logical than continuing to attempt what is currently failing."

He moved for her to sit and she began trying to write the necessary program as Spock looked on. He gave quick and patient corrections and suggestions, and within forty-five minutes, they began running tests on the result.

"You likely would have performed well in the Communications Programming Seminar I taught last term," he said as she scanned the source code for obvious errors.

"Yeah, I had _wanted_ to take it," she began.

 _Until she had found out_ he _was teaching it._

"I heard most people failed it," she finished tactfully.

"It is difficult subject matter," he said dismissively. "Yet I believe you are more than capable and would have excelled, based on your performance in the Xenolinguistics Programming Laboratory."

She stared at him in disbelief. It was incredible that he even remembered her out of the hundreds of students he taught each term, let alone remembered her well enough to recall how she'd done.

"I didn't do that well in your class," she argued, trying to keep her teeth from chattering against the cold. "You only gave me a satisfactory rating."

"You _were_ satisfactory," he explained.

"But not _exceptional_?" she countered.

"In my tenure at the Academy, I have only given two exceptional ratings."

" _Two_?" she scoffed.

"I believe many students at the Academy wrongly receive exceptional ratings when none are due. In reference to performance, it implies talent and effort that are extraordinary, and most people are _not_ extraordinary. If extraordinariness were common, it would alter the meaning of the word."

"But _still_ , students need a high average that includes a certain number of exceptional ratings to get particular assignments or upper division courses. How are they supposed to do that if being exceptional borders on impossible?"

"Starfleet Academy has perpetuated a system of entitlement and false grade inflation, and I merely choose not to submit to that system by grading people as exceptional when they are not."

"And do you wonder why no one wants to take your classes?" she retorted.

"No, I do _not_ wonder: the reason is evident. Most students, yourself included, apparently, would prefer to take a course with an instructor who grades more leniently but perhaps does not teach as effectively, simply to achieve a better performance record."

She wasn't sure if his response was an insult, a challenge, or simply an arrogant byproduct of his Vulcan personality.

"What does it take to get an exceptional rating from Commander Spock?" she asked tersely.

He paused to consider his answer, and then looked down at the computer terminal. She looked as well, and noted the program had passed the final phase of tests. She brought it online, and it worked flawlessly.

"I believe you have answered your own question," he said.

"Wait, was that- did you- was that _almost_ a compliment?" she asked incredulously.

"While you may not be universally exceptional, you have a wide range of talent, Cadet Uhura."

 _Forget suffocating or freezing to death. She was pretty sure she was going to die of shock._

She turned her attention back to the terminal to visually look for any intercepted signals, but her mind was still reeling from his admission. It was still highly unlikely they would detect any transmissions, but staying busy was keeping her mind off of other things, and she was grateful for that.

Spock returned to the front of the cabin to check the receiver's status, and she rested her head on the terminal briefly and almost immediately began to fall asleep, but was roused by the growling of her stomach.

"We should consume a meal," he said.

"Yeah," she muttered quickly, sitting upright.

She performed a communications check with the away team and then helped him move several cargo containers to get at the rations. She noticed he was favoring his left arm.

"Is it still hurting you?" she asked, glancing down at his arm.

"I have limited sensation in the hand," he explained.

The break had been severe, and the hasty way she'd practically glued the pieces of his arm back together virtually guaranteed he had significant nerve damage. A surgeon could pretty easy patch him up, but there was nothing they could do _here_ , and for _that_ , she felt guilty.

"Yet I am grateful you were able to stop the blood loss and preserve the limb," he added, making her wonder if he could read her mind.

With only one working arm, he was still stronger than she was, especially given her ribs still moderately ached.

" _What a pair we are_ ," she thought grimly to herself as she sank to her knees and sifted through the rations.

She eyed the containers nervously. She'd packed the newer stuff for Chekov and Sulu, but _this_ … she was surprised the packages weren't stamped with labels that read "Operation Osprey," in reference to the Earth-Romulan War of 2156. Supposedly food was _food_ and this stuff was designed to last for centuries, but she couldn't help wonder what that was going _taste_ like.

She extracted one package and turned it over to see it was veal Marsala. She noted the packaging date and began to laugh hysterically.

 _2164\. She hadn't been_ that _far off._

"Cadet?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry," she said, catching her breath. "I'm just not very optimistic about food that's more than ninety years old."

She tossed the veal back into the box and reached for a package labeled as pesto pasta, and unfortunately brushed hands with Spock once again. She pulled back quickly and began to apologize. He said nothing, but gently handed her the package.

"Oh no, _you_ take it," she insisted. "I'm just trying to find a vegetarian meal."

"I also refrain from consuming meat," he said simply.

She didn't know that, but it made sense if her understanding of Vulcan philosophy was correct.

"Um, here's a spaghetti squash meal," she said. "I'm not really picky."

"Nor am I," he agreed. "We merely require nourishment; palatability is irrelevant."

" _Ok then_ ," she said with a forced smile.

She grabbed another blanket and pulled it over the one she was already wearing, and then sat down with her back against the wall to engineering to eat her meal. The air temperature in the cabin was hovering between zero and one degrees Celsius.

The food was surprisingly and delightfully mediocre, and she hungrily dug in.

Spock followed suit by securing an additional blanket and sitting next to her on the floor. She eyed him curiously for choosing to sit in such close proximity to her, but shrugged and continued eating.

"I can't believe I'm actually enjoying food that's older than my grandparents," she mused.

"Starfleet rations are designed for longevity," Spock replied. "The food is adequate."

"There's a difference between 'serviceable' and 'preferable,'" she argued. "Take this shuttle, for instance. If we had come in the _Volta III_ , maybe we wouldn't be in this mess."

"I have never understood the human tendency to indulge in reflection on what might have been," Spock replied. "Furthermore, this team was assigned the _Dalton II_ weeks ago. Each of the teams participating in this training mission was given a series of last minute changes and additions to measure the team's ability to adapt."

"Are you kidding me? We were _supposed_ to fly to Aldebaran in this rust bucket?"

"Yes."

"Well, I realize this training mission isn't _technically_ over, but given the circumstances, would it be inappropriate to ask how we're doing? You know, aside from running into a mine, losing Nemechek, and then crashing the shuttle into hellish, uninhabitable, frozen wasteland?"

"I shall reserve final judgment until we return to Earth," Spock said earnestly. "Yet I will say the most serious error was your crew's failure to utilize down time to acquaint yourselves with the unfamiliar shuttle."

 _That was true. If she_ had _, she would have known where the distress beacons were and would have deployed them in time. This was all_ her _fault._

Again he seemed to sense her thoughts, because he added, "There is no need to assign blame. I might have pointed out the crew's oversight, but chose to observe instead. It is a lesson for all of us."

"One I won't forget for the rest of my life," she agreed dryly. "However long _that_ is."

The shuttle's computer sounded an alert that interrupted her self-pity. She sat upright and nearly spilled food on herself.

 _They were picking up a signal._

She scrambled to her feet to stop the program and localize the transmission source to the correct channel. Spock stood behind her and watched as she scanned back and forth.

Their transmitters were completely destroyed, so they would be unable to send a message _out_ , but if they were picking up a signal at this range, there was a good chance someone was close enough to find them on short-range scanners.

Her heart began to sink when she realized the computer was narrowing it down to the middle of the infrared region.

 _There was no way to be certain just yet, but it seemed as if the Nausicaans had caught up with them._


	8. Distraction

The next eleven hours were teeming with fear, shivering, and exhaustion. The signal they'd picked up came in an out at regular intervals, suggesting there was a vessel or some other transmitting object in orbit of the planetoid.

There was no discernable message to the transmission, and there was no way to know for sure if it was Nausicaan or not, as the crash had severely limited their scanning abilities. Yet when the program she'd designed finished isolating the frequency, it was _identical_ to the Nausicaan warning buoy they'd encountered before colliding with the mine.

She'd looked to Spock for some logical explanation other than Nausicaans, and he couldn't give her one. They both agreed there was almost no chance the transmission was Federation in origin, since Federation vessels would only broadcast on that frequency in a severe emergency, and if they were broadcasting on infrared, they'd also be broadcasting across the entire spectrum, and there was no evidence of that.

The first thing she did was notify the away team about the development, but there was very little _they_ could do, other than keep their eyes open and their phasers at the ready.

Sulu and Chekov had already emplaced one of the distress beacons and it was transmitting perfectly, but it would still be too early for Starfleet to reasonably be looking for them. If Nausicaans really were in orbit around the planetoid, they would see the beacon too, but so far, there had been no sign of anyone.

They prepared themselves as best as they could for a confrontation. She primed the phaser clipped to her utility belt and Spock armed himself as well. For a time they attempted to keep busy by exploring ways to repair the transmitter or improvise other communication strategies, but lethargy and cold tamped their efforts.

She wanted to treat the burn on her leg, but she also didn't want to get out of her flight suit to do it, partly because she was afraid of losing what little body heat remained to her, and partly because she didn't want Spock seeing her in her underwear. The indignity of needing him to treat her ribs was still pretty raw in her mind.

So she coped with the pain, fatigue, and cold as best as she could. They'd quit talking long ago, and the only words spoken in the shuttle for nearly five hours were from communication checks with the away team.

They sat in limbo, uncertain if they were being watched or if anyone would come sniffing around on the planetoid's surface. The temperature continued to decline and was now at minus twenty degrees Celsius, which was only nineteen degrees warmer than it was outside. She and Spock were now shrouded in four blankets each, but the material was so thin she'd jokingly imagined that plastic trash bags would be warmer.

She was so tired that her mind felt foreign and fuzzy around the edges, but the present situation made sleep impossible. She lightly dozed in an out, but occasional creaks in the shuttle caused by draughts of wind sent surges of adrenaline through her body which kept her perpetually alert.

She eventually found herself staring disinterestedly at Spock, who was sitting with his back against the adjacent wall. He appeared to be either sleeping or meditating, and she thought he looked quite peaceful. She was in the middle of debating whether his adherence to a philosophy that eschewed all emotion would make coping with this whole mess better or worse when she noticed his dark eyes were fully open and gazing back at her.

" _Hi_ ," she said softly, feeling stupid for being unable to come up with anything better to say, and worried that even stupider things were on the verge of coming out.

"Hello, Cadet," he replied simply.

An awkward silence began to emerge, but they didn't stop looking at one another. His eyes seemed different somehow: the empty neutrality was missing, and had been replaced by something that looked like it bordered on serenity.

"I feel like I'm never going to be warm again," she finally joked, as a means to break the proverbial ice. "Though maybe the Nausicaans will come down and start firing phase pistols at us. At least _then_ we would be warm."

"I have never understood the function of human jesting," he said predictably, but then he stopped and quickly looked around the cabin.

He stood suddenly and moved toward several of the engineering boxes and began sorting through them. She slowly stood to see what he was doing, and found her legs were almost too stiff to properly function.

 _At least the severe burn on her left leg didn't seem to hurt as much anymore._

He finally located a small, dark gray box and tapped on the surface with his fingernail.

" _Commander_?" she asked anxiously. "What do you need with a synchronic meter?"

She wondered if he planned on doing a diagnostic check on the obliterated transporter system or had simply lost his mind.

"I have no present use for meter, but I believe the case may be useful," he said, setting it down on the floor to the cabin.

He opened the locker with the hand phasers and primed one.

"What are you _doing_?" she asked anxiously, backing away.

 _He had finally snapped. All that logic, all that discipline, and now he was using their equipment for target practice._

He fired at the case and she yelped in surprise, but rather than vaporize, the case began to glow. Spock held the energy beam of the phaser steady, and even at her distance, she could feel the heat coming off of it. He cautiously moved forward to examine the case, and she nervously followed.

" _Ah_ ," she breathed in delight.

 _It was_ so _warm. She'd cuddle with it if she could._

She held out her frozen fingers, which quickly began to sting as they thawed.

"The case is composed of a duranium alloy," he explained, holding his own hands outward to warm them.

The shuttle's hull, along with almost all Starfleet vessels, was made of duranium, as it was capable of withstanding short bursts of most phased weapons and disruptor fire.

 _He was a_ genius _. She could kiss him. Ok, maybe not_ kiss _him, but she really found herself fighting a strange compulsion to hug him._

He sat down on the floor huddled over the case, and she considered how close she could get to it, and by extension, _him_ , without it being "weird."

She was so cold that she decided there was no such thing as "too close." She'd spoon with a mangy dog at this point. She plopped down right beside him and actually pushed him a little bit with her hip as she settled herself. She felt his body stiffen and he looked at her quizzically. She stared at him challengingly, and he looked away.

 _Apparently it was cold enough that even Spock was consenting to snuggle a bit. The man was full of surprises._

At this close range, she could see the formation of very faint stubble on his jaw. She didn't know why she thought that was interesting, but she'd never seen a Vulcan with facial hair. They all wore the same smooth face and severe haircut in accordance with whatever principle governed bowl-shaped hairstyles.

The thought of him with a beard was laughable. She very nearly did laugh when she pictured him completing the look with a leather jacket and a hover bike. It almost seemed a shame that they would either die or be rescued before she could see it properly grow out. He seemed to sense her smiling at him, because he turned to look at her, and at such close proximity, it felt strangely intimate.

She looked away shyly and glanced back at the glowing duranium case.

"I didn't mean to stare," she mumbled. "I just noticed your beard coming in."

"I clearly lack the requisite supplies to shave," Spock replied.

 _She could never quite tell if he was being sarcastic or just plain Vulcan, or perhaps some mix of both and neither._

"Yeah, I kind of figured that out," she retorted. "I wasn't saying it's _bad_. I just didn't realize Vulcans grew facial hair."

She cringed at how ignorant she must have sounded, and rolled her eyes at herself.

"They do," he answered. "Though mine is thicker than most, due to my human ancestry."

" _Human ancestry_?"

"My mother is human."

" _What_?" she asked incredulously.

She hated herself for sounding so completely shocked, but she _was_. Commander Spock had a human mother? What had that been like for him? For his _mother_? How did his parents…? She stopped herself before she wandered too far down the path of perverted curiosity.

"I believe my statement is self-evident," he responded.

"Yeah, um, _sorry_ ," she said meekly. "I didn't know, is all."

She realized it would be best if she just stopped talking before she shoved her foot even further into her mouth. But it didn't stop her from _thinking_.

Interspecies relationships were somewhat commonplace at Starfleet Academy. It made sense, when there were lot of young people from all over the Federation, many who were away from home for the first time in their lives, housed in close proximity, and coping with the stresses of midterms and paper deadlines.

Starfleet was still more of an exception than the rule. Most of her friends back home would probably think the idea of a human marrying a Vulcan to be pretty… _unusual_. People would be polite enough not to _say_ anything, but the underlying prejudice was most certainly there. Centuries of progress made everyone think they were progressive, but it was still a relative term.

She realized in that moment that even _she_ wasn't as progressive as she thought: she'd been stunned by his confession of his mixed heritage. It wasn't that she cared or thought it was _wrong_ : if his parents were both consenting adults and they loved each other, then they deserved to find their own happiness together.

But the idea of a Vulcan finding _happiness_ seemed like an oxymoron. It brought her back to the question of how a Vulcan had ever convinced a human woman to marry him in the first place, and what a human woman had seen in a Vulcan man to accept him. Or maybe _she_ had asked _him_.

 _It was too weird to think about._

Or maybe they weren't married at all. He had only mentioned his mother. Maybe he was the product of a casual fling.

 _Nope, definitely too weird and wildly inappropriate to think about._

Her toes were tingling painfully as they were warming by the ambient heat of the duranium case. She wriggled them around in her boots and stood to collect the communicator to check in with the away team.

They were in the middle of setting up the second distress beacon, and estimated they would return to the shuttle in approximately five hours. They'd seen no sign of Nausicaans or anyone else. Despite their ragged exhaustion, they would be unable to stop and rest, since their suits only had twenty-nine percent power remaining. She acknowledged the transmission and logged it.

 _Seeing Sulu and Chekov again sounded pretty damn good. Almost as good as rest._

Spock reheated the duranium case and she sat down and stared at the glowing metal listlessly. He cautiously lowered himself to the floor next to her, and his damaged left hand accidentally brushed her leg.

Neither one of them recoiled or flinched at the inadvertent contact. She looked at him calmly and marveled how quickly things could change. When they'd first started this grand adventure, they'd treated each other like they were practically radioactive. Maybe they'd gotten over it, or maybe they were just too tired and disillusioned to care anymore.

"Perhaps you should sleep," he said.

"The away team doesn't get to sleep," she replied bitterly. " _You_ can't sleep if I'm asleep, since someone has to stay awake and keep an eye on things. I don't think it's fair that _I_ should get to sleep when no one else does."

"Your appreciation for camaraderie is admirable. However, my Vulcan physiology allows me to function with less sleep, and the away team _cannot_ sleep due to their current mission constraints. If you rest now, you will be awake for them to rest when they return."

She couldn't deny his reasoning was sound, but she still felt awful at the thought of taking a nap while everyone else kept working.

"It is logical," he insisted.

She handed him the communicator and folded one of her blankets into a makeshift pillow. He moved backward slightly to allow her to lie more closely to the duranium case. She tried to curl herself around it, but it was very small, and soon her back was freezing and her face and chest were boiling hot.

 _This wasn't going to be easy._

She struggled for nearly half an hour to fall asleep before rolling onto her back and staring up at the ceiling in frustration. She could feel Spock watching her, but he said nothing.

"Commander?"

"Cadet?"

"Do you think we're going to die here?"

"I do not know."

"Ok."

She was quiet for a few moments while she pondered the fact that they had about half a day to be found or they'd die. She wasn't sure how to find a way to accept that, and thought grimly of the old adage about "sleeping when you're dead."

She had so many plans for the summer. She had so many plans for the rest of her _life_. _So much for planning_.

Planning was a way of looking forward to things; it was a methodology for hopes and dreams. She was never going to be able to make any more plans. She looked at Spock and sighed. He glanced in her direction, and opened his mouth to speak, but she rolled onto her elbow and cut him off.

"Commander?"

" _Yes_ , cadet?"

"I thought your programming lab was really good."

"Thank you."

"What I'm trying to say is, I _did_ learn a lot, and I was thinking about how you said I cared more about the way my record looks than about actually learning. I took offense to that at first, but I think that's probably true. I mean, I _care_ a lot about learning, but I think I care about having a perfect record more than I should."

"You are a good student. No doubt your record is exemplary."

" _Right_ , well, I need an advisor for my senior thesis. I was going to ask Lieutenant Bautista or Commander Howe, but I feel like I could learn a lot from you, if you're willing. I don't know how many students you accept each term, and I realize I should be doing this through more formal channels, but I just thought I'd ask you while I still had the chance."

"Send me a memorandum with your thesis proposal when we return to Starfleet Academy, and I will gladly review it."

When _we return to Starfleet Academy. That almost sounded like optimism._

She blinked away the beginnings of tears, and rolled onto her other side to face the wall. She felt like she'd just committed academic suicide by asking one of the toughest professors at the Academy to be her advisor, but she'd just made a plan for the future, and that gave her hope.

She drifted into a fitful sleep and tossed and turned on the hard, cold floor of the cabin. The heat from the duranium case was working a little too well, and half of her body was always cold, and the other half was always burning up. She was also roused every fifteen minutes when Spock made contact with the away team, but it felt comforting to hear Sulu and Chekov's voices.

The biggest hindrance to sleep was knowing that Spock was watching her. She knew he wasn't being _intentionally_ creepy, but it was alarming to roll over and face the duranium case and find he was observing her.

Eventually, exhaustion trumped everything else, and she settled into a deep slumber. She wasn't sure how long she slept for, but she was arisen by the sound of Spock jumping to his feet and loudly telling her to wake up.


	9. Discovery

" _Huh_? _Who_? _Wha_ -"

She sprang to a sitting position and rubbed her eyes, quickly realizing this whole fiasco hadn't been the worst nightmare of her life. Her heart was threatening to pound out of her chest in panic.

Spock wasn't the kind of person who shouted, and that frightened her. It would almost be less terrifying if he just spontaneously exploded.

She was still a bit disoriented and nearly put her hand down on the hot duranium case to rise to her feet, but sensed the intense heat pouring from it and rolled over onto her side. She could see him at the computer terminal, quickly scrolling through a number of systems.

"What's going on, Commander?"

"The computer is detecting eight additional life forms on the planetoid's surface," he said simply.

"What?" she exclaimed.

"Nausicaans."

" _What_?" she yelped even louder.

 _How could he be so_ damn _calm?_

"I believe my statement was clear."

"Yeah, no kidding," she snapped.

She wanted to ask what they should _do_ , but before the words could escape her mouth, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She began to think like the Starfleet officer she was training to be, rather than the inexperienced, wide-eyed cadet she _was_.

 _What_ should _they do? What did her_ training _tell her to do? The away team: contact the away team._

His thoughts seemed to be attuned to hers, because before she could ask the question, he was already answering it.

"I have been unable to make contact with the away team for twenty minutes. Don an environmental suit and continue to attempt to establish contact."

"Aye, sir," she said promptly.

If Nausicaans were closing in, being dependent on the shuttle's artificial atmosphere would put them at a severe disadvantage. They needed to start thinking several steps ahead, including the possibility that they may have to retreat.

Her hands shook slightly as she pulled on the heavy overshoes and suspenders, but she sensed it was more from exhaustion and adrenaline than fear. They'd been anticipating something like this since they'd crashed, and now that it was happening, she felt eerily calm.

She'd done training in these suits the prior summer, and at the time had wondered if she would ever use one. Communications officers rarely went on away missions, and slightly less than half of all communications officers were posted to ships.

A frequently used adage among the cadre during weekend tactical and emergency training exercises was, "A crisis doesn't care what your rank or specialty is." In her very first training mission, she had already learned the hard way that this was true, _and_ more than once. _This was just one more example._

She left the helmet off to keep the suit depressurized and conserve power, and repositioned the utility belt to grant her quicker access to her hand phaser. Spock began to put on his own environmental suit while she started trying to reach the away team.

"How far out were they the last time you made contact?" she asked.

"Five kilometers."

 _Five kilometers away twenty minutes ago._

She couldn't do the math in her head as easily as Commander Spock, but figured that at a light jog, they could have probably covered about half that distance in that amount of time.

She shuffled over to the terminal to examine scans of the immediate area. She froze.

" _Commander_?" she whispered.

"Cadet?"

"There are four lifesigns less than a five hundred meters away and closing in on our position."

He awkwardly finished securing the top portion of the environmental suit with his damaged left hand and met her at the terminal. She was analyzing their detailed bioscans against the shuttle's database but she already had a sinking feeling based on the most preliminary data.

All four individuals were over two meters tall, meaning that if they were human, they were all squarely in the freak category for height. Just seconds later, the shuttle's computer identified the probability of them being Nausicaan at nearly one hundred percent.

"Maybe they just want to talk?" she said with a weak smile, feeling her earlier confidence begin to fade.

"We should prepare for the possibility that they do not," Spock rebutted smoothly. "Extend the scan radius to ten kilometers to search for human biosigns and activate the shuttle's universal translator."

 _Bio_ signs. Not _life_ signs.

It bothered her that Spock's logical mind suspected the away team was dead, but she couldn't deny it was a possibility. So she tucked her anxiety away as best as she could and complied with his order. She flinched when she heard the sound of Spock charging a second phaser.

The data was confusing. The four Nausicaan signatures remained, and they were less than a hundred hundred meters away now. But she noticed two more Nausicaan lifesigns five kilometers away in the opposite direction, and a single human lifesign less than fifteen hundred meters away and closing in fast on their position.

"Sir, I think either Sulu or-"

He held up his hand to stop her and she looked around in confusion. He seemed to be listening intently, but all she could hear was the swirling of the chaotic atmosphere outside and the pounding of her own heart.

"Is the universal translator active?" he asked quietly.

"Yes."

"Pressurize your suit."

She hit the button near her left collarbone to activate the helmet, and he did the same. It snapped over her head and face, sealing her into the suit. A _whoosh_ of pressurized air brushed her cheeks as the suit's automatic life support systems engaged.

The suit had an internal com system, but without a known, linked channel for the away team, there was no way to contact them. Still, she could communicate with Spock without making external noise, so she toggled the small white button by her right collarbone and heard a faint crackle of static.

"Sir, there's a single human lifesign approaching us," she said quickly.

"How far away?"

Her peripheral vision was slightly obstructed by the helmet, so she turned to see the computer terminal more closely.

"A thousand hundred meters away, but- _it's stopped moving_ ," she replied in confusion.

The person had covered five hundred meters in about a minute: that was a _lightning_ fast pace, even when accounting for the planetoid's light gravity. Why were they in such a hurry just a moment ago, only to stop now? Her eyes darted around the scans of the immediate area, and she exhaled a shaky breath.

"The Nausicaans: they're _here_ ," she said quietly.

Spock was looking calmly around the interior of the cabin when they heard the loud clanging sound of metal on metal near the port side of the shuttle. She wanted to jump out of her skin, but forced herself to at least _look_ calm.

"Do you recall your tactical training and marksmanship fundamentals?" Spock asked calmly.

"Uh, _yeah_ ," she uttered reflexively.

 _Close quarters combat with energy weapons: just one more of those skills she'd breezed through at the Academy because she assumed she'd never use it._

Her mind was racing through the proper escalation of force protocols but was quickly getting hung up on vague details. She gritted her teeth. She had never intended to be a damn security officer.

They heard a louder banging sound and the hiss of an energy discharge near the shuttle's stern, and she could almost make out muted speech. She held her breath and took a few cautious steps forward.

Nausicaan wasn't one of her target languages, but she knew some basic phrases. Just as she started trying to pick up on their conversation, one of them began shouting loudly enough for the universal translator to kick in.

" _Federation_!" called a voice from the other side.

She exchanged glances with Spock. He was still _annoyingly_ calm.

" _You are violating our space_ ," the voice shouted.

"We are in _Federation_ space," Spock replied firmly.

She flinched when another crack of an energy weapon ricocheted off the shuttle's hull.

" _Are you going to hide in there like vermin or come out and face us_?" the voice called.

She looked at Spock anxiously. Based on their tone and the potshots they were taking at the shuttle, she wasn't eager to go out and shake hands.

"We are not seeking conflict with you," Spock explained.

She heard a third energy discharge, but this one was sustained. She looked around frantically, and noticed the weaker starboard side of the hull was beginning to glow, just like the duranium case had.

 _They were cutting their way inside._

It was a terrible tactical choice: she and Spock might be outnumbered two-to-one, but they still had the advantage because they knew the layout of the shuttle's forward cabin and could take up a good defensive position, whereas the Nausicaans would have to come in single file through the hole they were cutting.

It should have made her feel better, but it didn't. Somehow, theory and book learning didn't seem to matter much at all right now. Then she realized it would make more sense for them to simply cut a hole big enough to toss a remote device through, like a stun grenade, or _worse_.

"Take up a position there," Spock said evenly, motioning to the overturned terminal she'd been sitting at prior to the crash.

He moved to the corner of the wall that they were currently working to breach, and she stumbled forward to take a knee behind the computer console. She gave up trying to keep herself from shaking.

"Remember your training," Spock said casually.

She looked at him and felt a wave of unnatural calm. They might be in the last moments of their lives, but they had done everything they could. He hadn't been her first choice for companionship in these final hours, but she was glad she wasn't going it alone.

"Aye, sir," she said, making eye contact with him. "And thank you."

He nodded, and seconds later, she felt a rush of air against the outside of her suit. The forward cabin had been depressurized: they had broken through. She started to take aim with her phaser when what she had feared became reality.

A small disc came flying through the cabin, and her eyes were mesmerized by the arc of its fall to the floor. _A stun grenade._

Time seemed to dilate and she looked back to the half-meter gaping hole that had emerged in the hull. Just out of her field of vision, she was aware that Spock was moving, diving toward the device that was beeping on the floor. She wasn't sure where to look, but kept her phaser trained on the hole and looked down just in time to see Spock lob the grenade back outside.

She saw a green energy beam strike him in the right side, and his body instantly froze and landed motionless on the cabin floor. _He was dead._

In a fraction of an instant, her terror turned to rage, and she turned back toward the hole to find a Nausicaan struggling to squeeze through. He was _so_ ugly. She stood defiantly and took careful aim. Her presence clearly caught him off-guard, but he was too slow to properly aim his phase pistol.

Her phaser was set to the highest stun setting, and she fired it into his open mouth. His torso instantly slackened, leaving him stuck halfway in the shuttle and halfway out. She could hear more yelling coming from outside and more energy discharges, and she furiously began pushing at the Nausicaan's enormous body to shove him back through the hole.

She wasn't scared anymore. She was _angry_.

The Nausicaan proved heavier than she realized, and she struggled in vain just to get him to budge. Then slowly, he seemed to start moving on his own. His limp body seemed to _flow_ back outside, like a shoelace through an eyelet, and what she saw on in the dim light of the harsh planetoid made her almost squeal with joy.

 _Sulu_. He was dragging the Nausicaan's unconscious body out of the way.

"Where's Commander Spock?" he shouted.

His voice was muffled through his suit and she turned off the internal communication system on her own suit to be able to speak to him.

"I think- I- I think he's-"

Sulu started trying to climb through the hole in the shuttle's hull and she crawled on her knees to where Spock lie face down. She could see condensation vapor forming on the glass faceplate of his mask. _He was breathing._

She yelped in relief and rolled him over onto his back. She scrambled to her feet to find the medical tricorder just as Sulu managed to ungracefully fall through the hole into the cabin.

"Where's Chekov?" she yelled.

Sulu didn't answer, but she was too busy tearing apart the medical kit to really notice. When she found the tricorder and turned around, she noticed Sulu had a weird expression on his face.

" _Hey_!" she said, snapping her fingers at him to get his attention. "Where's Chekov?"

He furrowed his eyebrows and held up his finger, suggesting he was listening to something else. She realized he was listening to the internal communication channel in his own environmental suit, and she unceremoniously grabbed him by his helmet to get a look at the channel he was on so that she could tie in her own suit to it.

Once she programmed the right channel, she shouted a third time, "Where's Chekov?"

Sulu jumped in surprise, but before she could get an answer, she felt the strange sensation of her body scattering through a transporter beam. It only took a fraction of a second to rematerialize, but when she did, she whirled around in panic.

"Здравствуйте!" called a familiar voice.

She found herself face-to-face with the young Russian. The helmet of his environmental suit was off and he was standing at a large, alien computer console. He offered a cheerful wave, and she disengaged the helmet on her suit and stared at him in disbelief.

She took a few steps forward and nearly tripped over Spock's unconscious body. Sulu moved around her to join Chekov at the terminal.

"Where _are_ we?" she snapped. "What the _hell_ is going on here?"


	10. Deliverance

"Have you ever heard of the famous Russian game called capture the flag?"

She stared at Chekov incredulously, mouth open, but unable to find anything to say.

"Well, you see, the object is to capture the other team's flag. They hide it, and you have to find it before they find yours. Well, today, we played capture the ship."

"Capture the flag is _not_ Russian," Sulu moaned, rolling his eyes.

"It is _too_. It was invented by Sergei-"

"Can we do this some other time?" she interrupted, finally starting to process her new surroundings.

She bent down on the transporter pad to tend to Commander Spock, feeling grateful she still had the medical tricorder in her hand.

"So where _are_ we?" she asked again.

"The Nausicaans' ship," Sulu grinned.

" _What_?" she gasped, cradling Spock's head in her lap and disengaging his helmet.

"Well, long story short, our communicator finally died and we were ambushed by four Nausicaans on our way back to the shuttle. We were able to stun them, and then we listened in on their communication lines and realized they had left only two people behind on their ship. So boy genius here modified their transport beacons and we called for a beam back. Unfortunately, only one of them worked, and Chekov and I got split up," Sulu explained.

She was only halfway listening. She began analyzing Spock's vital signs with the tricorder, noting his breathing and pulse were a bit slow but still within normal range for his biology. Then she remembered he had said he was half-human, and the tricorder was only programmed to do only Vulcan _or_ human, not both. She began to feel a slight twinge of anxiety.

"So I assumed Chekov was in trouble and raced back to the shuttle to get your help," Sulu continued with a smirk. "Turns out, you needed my help more than I needed yours, and Chekov needed _no one's_ help."

"I am vicious," Chekov beamed, flexing both of his arms. "Like a borzoi."

"Yeah," she muttered, checking Spock's pupils.

She paused for a moment to consider how dark his eyes really were. She could barely see his pupils against his nearly onyx irises, but noted the latter contained tiny chocolate-colored flecks.

"Is Commander Spock ok?" Chekov asked.

"I _think_ so," she said anxiously, checking his distal pulse just in case the tricorder was malfunctioning.

"The Nausicaans got him with one of their phase pistols," Sulu explained to Chekov. "Based on the energy signatures of their weapons, he'll probably be fine, but I doubt he's going to be very happy when he wakes up."

She gently set his head back on the floor and stood up.

"What about the Nausicaans? And Nemechek?"

"The system is almost ready for the next transport," Chekov said, scratching his chin, before stretching his mouth into a broad grin.

Chekov's face was several lovely hues of purple and yellow from where he'd broken his nose in the crash, which gave his smiles a mildly deranged look.

"Here, we have to move him out of the way," Sulu said, pointing to Spock and jogging back to the transporter pad. "Grab his legs; I'll get his head."

Even with Sulu's help, Spock's limp body was just as heavy as it had been when he'd fainted back on the _Dalton II_.

"Ugh, _Commander_ , maybe you could skip out on dessert every once in a while," Sulu grunted, as they half-carried, half-dragged him off the pad.

As they were setting him down, Sulu's grip slipped and the top half of Spock's body flopped to the floor and she heard the smack of his head on the hard surface. She glared at Sulu menacingly, and he shrugged in shocked innocence.

"It was an _accident_ ," he stammered.

"You could have _hurt_ him," she yelled, crouching down to check on him. "He hit his _head."_

"I think he'll be _fine_ ," Sulu said in a quiet, patronizing voice. "Besides, even if he's _not_ , he's smarter than both of us put together. He could stand to lose a few brain cells and level the playing field, you know?"

"He saved my life," she snapped.

"It was a _joke_ ," he pleaded.

" _It's not funny_."

Sulu was beginning to pick up on the seriousness of her demeanor, and looked at her with an air of inquisition.

" _What_ \- did you two have some deep heart to heart conversations while we were gone or something?" he teased. "Do you have a _thing_ for Commander Spock?"

She sneered at him in righteous indignation. "It's not like _that_. I respect him. He saved my life. _You_ saved my life too. If he slammed _your_ head on the floor, I'd be just as pissed at him."

" _Sure_ ," he said with a sly smile, before muttering under his breath, "And I didn't _slam_ his head."

"Can you two kiss and make up so we can get this show on the road? Or in this case, transporter pad?" Chekov interjected with a smile that was trying to mask a hint of annoyance.

Sulu unclipped the phaser from his belt and she did the same. They took up defensive positions around the pad and charged their weapons.

"Ready," Sulu said.

"Energizing," Chekov said, activating the transporter.

She tensed in anticipation as the four Nausicaans and Nemechek's body appeared on the pad. The Nausicaans were still unconscious, and Chekov came around the long terminal to assist them. Sulu had located some energy bands used for sealing cargo containers, and she stood by with her phaser at the ready while they bound the Nausicaans' hands.

She wondered if they had a legal right to be restraining the Nausicaans on their own ship and began to consider all the tedious things she learned in her basic rule of law courses about prisoners, encounters with non-Federation races, and what constituted commandeering a vessel. Unfortunately, along with almost everything else, they'd failed to bring an adjutant to offer legal guidance.

She looked at the Nausicaan who had stunned Commander Spock and knew they had acted in self-defense, so their actions were probably justified, and worst-case scenario, they could plead the extraordinary, extenuating circumstances of being stranded on a hostile planetoid, _and_ the fact that they were just scared cadets doing the best they could without a superior officer.

As she was helping them move the Nausicaans to the nearby storage locker that Chekov had already stashed the other six in, she reasoned that they were following Federation prisoner conventions as well as the situation allowed. They had avoided using deadly force, and weren't leaving the Nausicaans out on the planetoid's surface to die. They weren't going to torture them: they were keeping them in a well-lit, well-ventilated room.

Surely if and when the time came, they would feed them the same food they themselves would eat and would provide them the best standard of medical care available. Of course, the best available medical care pretty much amounted to a bandage and a "sorry about your luck" pat on the back, but she hoped it would be the thought that counted.

Moving Nemechek was hardest. Now that it seemed likely that they were getting out of this alive after all, the reality of his death was starting to sink in. His body was stiff, and moving him respectfully proved a harder task than they'd supposed. Eventually, they got him tucked him away in the far corner of the bridge and covered him with a cargo blanket.

Chekov went back to analyzing the ship's databases and computers, Sulu began exploring the small vessel while keeping an eye on the storage locker, and she checked on Spock. He was still breathing; he really just seemed to be _sleeping_. She watched him for several minutes, and then joined Chekov at the long terminal.

"So what's our plan?"

"This ship is a _mess_ ," he admitted with a shrug. "It's like they stole a little bit of technology from everyone. The warp drive is a Klingon design: it's fast though. Can probably do warp seven without breaking a sweat. Life support system might be… _Andorian_?"

"Chekov?" she murmured patiently.

"Yes?"

"I'm not an engineer."

"Oh," he frowned. " _Ok_. That's a shame."

"What about their com systems?" she asked, swiping her finger across the screen to activate it.

"I only just now got their translator working on the integrated system, so you know about as much as me at this point. It seems we're on a salvaged Andorian Atlira class ship that's been redesignated the _Guramba_."

" _Guramba_?" she said carefully.

Her Nausicaan language skills weren't the best, but the word sounded familiar. She shifted over to the next computer screen at the long station and began searching for communication systems. What she found was surprising: they were working with a system that was Earth-based and had to be nearly a hundred years old.

 _The infrared signals were starting to make a lot more sense._

"I'm not sure I can get a signal out over the nebula's interference," she mumbled to herself. "But maybe I can piggyback-"

A beeping sound at the station interrupted her train of thought.

"I- I think we're being hailed," she stammered.

She fumbled with several badly translated systems to try and find a way to access the com and visual link. The beeping continued, and her heart threatened to race out of her chest.

 _What if they were being hailed by other Nausicaans, or the Orion Syndicate?_

After fifteen more painstaking seconds, she found the switches to the receiver and modulator and engaged them.

"… _Guramba_ , _respond_ ," echoed a stern, male, _human_ -sounding voice with a slight British accent.

"Um, this is Cadet Uhura of- of the- _Guramba_ ," she stammered. "Formerly the _Dalton II."_

" _Cadet_?"

She finally located the switch for the visual link and the forward screen illuminated to show the face of a middle-aged man with dark hair that was just beginning to gray at the temples. She wanted to hug Chekov and jump up and down with joy, but managed to keep her professional bearing.

"You're a long way from Starfleet Academy, Cadet Uhura. I'm Captain Rajan of the starship _Pegasus_. Who's in command?"

She looked at Chekov and gulped. Spock was incapacitated, and by date of rank at the Academy, technically, _she_ was.

"I guess- I guess that would be _me_ , sir," she said with as much confidence as she could muster.

"Care to tell me how you came to be in command of the most wanted Nausicaan pirate vessel in this sector?"

That _was why the word "Guramba" had sounded so familiar. It wasn't a word: it was a_ name _. She must have read it in the news briefings or heard it on the holos._

"It's a pretty long story, sir," she said with a weak laugh. "But right now, we have an unconscious crewmember who needs medical attention. In fact, we _all_ need to be patched up."

"Understood. Standby for transport," Captain Rajan said seriously, before stifling a grin and adding, "By the way, I look forward to your report, acting Captain Uhura."

* * *

She felt like she could sleep for years. She started to fall asleep in the biobed while the nurse was busy taking her vital signs. She was grateful for the privacy divider: she had stripped down to her underwear while another nurse set to work treating the burn on her leg.

Her body was in horrible shape. It was covered in bruises and burns, and her muscles throbbed down to her bones. She smelled a little suspect too, which shouldn't have been that surprising, considering the fact that she'd spent the last two days living in a water resistant flight suit. Still, she was a little self-conscious.

She explained about her broken ribs and the nurse did a quick check. Apparently Spock had done a bang up job, and there was nothing left for the nurse to do, other than provide a hypospray to alleviate the deep ache she still felt there.

After they were done treating her, she showered and was given a clean uniform and directions to temporary quarters. Commander Wilcox, the _Pegasus_ ' first officer, had asked to meet with her, Sulu, and Chekov at 1930, which still gave her another two hours to find her quarters and get something to eat.

She assumed he wanted to take their official statement about what had happened, but the events of the past day were completely jumbled in her mind.

 _A space mine. A dead cadet. A shattered arm. Cracked ribs. An energy storm. Nearly freezing to death. Nausicaans. A teenage Russian ninja._

She felt overwhelmed, and wondered how the rest of her career would shape up. With any luck, this training mission would be the worst thing she'd ever have to deal with.

On her way out of sickbay, she passed a biobed containing Commander Spock. He was unconscious, but there was a doctor standing over him with a data PADD, logging readings of his vitals. She cautiously approached.

"Is he going to be ok?" she said quietly.

"Hmmm? Oh, yes," the doctor replied with a patient smile. "He just came out of surgery."

" _Surgery_?" she said in astonishment. "For _what_?"

"I really can't discuss that with you," he explained.

"Oh, right. _Privacy_. Sure," she nodded, noting his left arm was bound in a strange metal brace.

She cringed, and the doctor seemed to notice what she was looking at.

He pointed to Spock's arm with the PADD's stylus and asked, "Did you do that?"

"Break it or fix it?" she mumbled.

"Either."

"I guess technically _both_ , and _neither_ ," she groaned. "He broke it in the crash protecting me from falling debris, and I did my best with the bone knitter. He's not going to have any permanent damage, is he? I guess you probably can't tell me because of privacy, like you said, but-"

"I've seen worse," the doctor interrupted, patting her on the shoulder. "He'll be fine."

"Can I sit with him?"

"Yeah, that's fine," he agreed as he walked away to a nearby computer terminal to input the data he'd just collected.

She found a small metal stool and sat by his bed. She wasn't exactly sure what she was doing: it would be grossly inappropriate to hold his hand or anything like that. She also wasn't sure if he could hear her, or what she would even say if he could.

Still, she felt like she owed him a debt she could never repay. He'd saved her life, _twice_ , and gotten seriously injured doing it both times. All the emotions she'd held during their ordeal began to bubble to the surface and she looked at the ceiling to blink away tears.

Another physician clad in a surgical gown emerged from the adjoining room and began speaking with the other doctor. She wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but she had excellent hearing. They were discussing Nemechek's autopsy.

That's when the first tears finally hit her cheeks. She'd wanted to join Starfleet ever since she was a little girl, and had always admired the men and women in their sharp uniforms with their adventurous lives. She knew it could be dangerous, but danger had always been an abstract concept. Wasn't _everything_ dangerous, to a degree?

It seemed as though her honeymoon with Starfleet was over and she hadn't even graduated the Academy yet.

"Cadet Uhura?" the doctor whispered.

She'd been so wrapped up in her own misery that she hadn't realized he'd come to stand next to her.

"He's going to be fine, I promise," the doctor said, looking at Spock. "Seriously, he's just sedated. He'll probably come to in about-"

"Did Nemechek suffer?" she interrupted, wiping the tears away and taking a deep breath. "I'm sure it's against policy to tell me because I'm not family. Truthfully, I barely knew the guy. But I watched him _die_."

"Never seen anything like that before, I take it?" he grimaced.

She shook her head.

"Hell, I'm a doctor: I've seen it plenty of times, but I can't say I've ever gotten used to it. But _no_ , Dr. Dietz tells me your friend suffered a high impact spinal shock that broke his neck. He was dead almost instantly."

She sighed and gave him a pained smile. She wasn't sure if that made it better somehow. She'd have to think about it, but she already knew she'd never arrive at a proper answer.

He left her alone to sit with Spock, and she felt content to just be with him while he rested. He had done the same for her just hours ago. After an hour, she caught herself starting to doze and realized she would need to give herself some time to find her quarters and grab a hot meal before her meeting with Commander Wilcox. She stood to leave when she noticed his eyes were open.

" _Commander_?"

His eyes rolled sharply to look at her.

"Should I go get the doctor?"

"What function would he or she perform, other than to diagnose me as being conscious?"

She bit her tongue _._

 _It didn't seem logical to be such a smart ass._

"I'm glad you're awake," she muttered. "I was just on my way to get supper. _Um_ …"

She started to feel really uncomfortable at the image of herself, hovering by his bedside, waiting for him to wake up.

"I guess I'll just go," she added, pointing her thumb toward the door.

"Cadet?"

"Sir?"

"Thank you for encouraging Cadet Sulu to take greater care with my head."


	11. Decisions

"That's quite a story, Commander Spock," Captain Rajan said, sipping from his glass of water.

"There are many exceptional elements to it, I agree," Spock replied. "Nevertheless, it is an accurate account of events as I understand them."

Spock was sitting across from the _Pegasus'_ captain in the small ready room adjacent to the ship's bridge. His left arm ached slightly and his head still hurt, but pain was inconsequential. It would fade.

"You know, it's not every day we send cadets out on training missions and end up apprehending pirates instead."

Spock said nothing. He knew many humans had a tendency toward repeating phrases and ideas they found difficult to comprehend.

"Well done, Commander Spock," Rajan finally added with a wry smile.

"As I explained, Captain, I was not responsible for the seizure of the _Guramba_ , therefore it would be inappropriate for me to accept your accolades."

"No, _that_ was your crew," Rajan agreed. "But Commander Wilcox spoke with them several hours ago to take their official statements, and all three of them credit their success to your outstanding leadership and technical expertise. Cadet Sulu says none of you would have even survived the crash were it not for your quick thinking following the impact with the mine."

"That is true," Spock agreed, recalling Sulu had wanted to eject the warp core instead.

"I am curious about one thing, Captain," Spock mused. "Why was the flight plan of the _Dalton II_ not withdrawn due to the increased piracy reported in the area?"

Rajan's face darkened and he set his glass of water down.

"I can't tell you, Commander," he said with a bitter scowl. "Politics? Economics? It makes me mad as hell to think about it. I've been sending my reports every day, asking for more assistance, but the Federation is slow to acknowledge there's a real problem out here with the Nausicaans and the Syndicate. I have my theories, but it's probably not professional to discuss them."

When Spock considered this new information, the Federation's reluctance to admit a growing crisis in this region of space was unsurprising. Risa was a lucrative center of commerce, and Aldebaran was a strategic point between the Federation and Klingon Empire.

He presumed the _Pegasus'_ mission was to quietly subdue piracy and organized crime in this sector and keep civilian transport ships moving freely, but one starship would be highly inadequate to such a task.

Spock also knew from personal experience that requesting additional assets from higher headquarters was rarely met with any real success. Starfleet was infamous for its pressure to do more with less, and promotions often hinged on a commanding officer's ability to accomplish the impossible, which perpetuated unrealistic standards for excellence throughout the organization.

"Given recent events, I am sure support for your mission will be forthcoming in the near future," Spock said objectively.

"Yes, a training shuttle running into a Nausicaan minefield will probably raise a few eyebrows back home," Rajan agreed. "Wilcox tells me Cadet Uhura was rather upset with herself for not detecting the minefield sooner. I can honestly say, the _Pegasus_ has run into three of them in the last five months, and we've never once detected one until it was already too late. My engineering crews have clocked long hours fixing the damage, but thanks to her, we now know to start looking on the infrared."

Spock nodded slightly in agreement. Cadet Uhura had a remarkable talent for communications, and a dedication to thoroughness that he did not often observe in members of her species.

"But the real heart of the matter is that we have a dead cadet," Rajan finished. "That's a political nightmare, but politics aside, I am angry that a young man had to die for people to pay attention."

Spock sensed the man was getting emotional, but knew from extensive previous experience that pointing out the illogic of emotion in a superior officer was unwise.

"His family was notified three hours ago," Rajan continued. "Which brings me to a rather delicate topic. I'm sure you know that it is customary for the commanding officer of the deceased to send formal condolences to the family."

"I am."

"As Anthony Nemechek was a cadet, there are a number of individuals who could lay claim to the title of his commanding officer. His team leader at the Academy plans to send a letter, but I feel it would be appropriate for you to write one as well, given you were with him at the time of his death."

"I shall comply with your request," Spock agreed.

Rajan offered a thin smile and said, "I sure you will do your best."

Before Spock could ponder what should be included in such a piece of correspondence, Rajan spoke again.

"We have finished salvaging the wreckage of the _Dalton II_ and are nearly complete with our forensic analysis on the planetoid's surface. I intend to leave orbit within the next hour, but I am required to deliver the Nausicaan prisoners to Aldebaran before I can return you and your training crew to Risa."

"I understand, Captain," he acknowledged.

"I anticipate you will be back on Risa in approximately two days, and I would like your official report before that time," Rajan added. "You are dismissed, Commander Spock."

He stood, nodded deferentially, and adjourned into the corridor. He had been assigned temporary quarters in the senior officer's billets, but wished to check in with the cadets and ensure they were properly situated.

He passed the mess hall en route, and decided to take a late meal before continuing to the junior officer's quarters. He was uncertain of the ship's dining hours, and he'd had little opportunity to eat in the previous two days.

The mess hall was nearly empty and the room's illumination was nearly half of what it had been in the corridor, which was unremarkable, given the late hour.

He sat down to a bowl of stew and checked his messages. Starfleet's public information office had already released details about the shuttle disaster, and he already had numerous queries from press agencies and colleagues. He scanned through dozens of similar messages, but stopped when he arrived at a memorandum from Cadet Uhura that had been sent ten minutes earlier.

It was her formal advising request. He opened it in curiosity and read through her proposal. He was not only surprised that she'd drafted the memorandum so quickly, but that she'd drafted it at all. In the shuttle, he had sensed she had asked him to be her advisor out of wounded pride, but had not seriously intended to seek his guidance for her senior thesis.

He had never acted as anyone's advisor. Many of his colleagues were inundated each spring and fall with requests and special pleas, and most would only accept five or six students each term. Competition among cadets for certain faculty members was often fierce, but no one had ever asked him.

He knew he had a reputation for being unfair and a ruthlessly strict grader, but as he had explained to Cadet Uhura, he only followed the written standards. Many other species, humans in particular, had a tendency to view his methods as a personal slight, and as a Vulcan, he tended to view their opinions on his methods as juvenile and illogical.

He finished reading her proposal and he was impressed, both with her commitment and her thesis idea. He decided to speak with her about it in person, and refocused his efforts on writing a letter to Cadet Nemechek's family.

He stared at the blank screen on the PADD for ten minutes, uncertain of where to begin or how humans preferred to cope with the death of a loved one. Vulcans recognized the value of grief, but grieving was a thing that was quite private.

The cook announced the kitchen was closing for the night, and Spock looked up to see Cadet Uhura was moving away from the food line with a bowl of soup in her hands.

They briefly made eye contact and she looked away, and he contemplated why she so occasionally seemed to have difficulty meeting his gaze. It seemed to come quite naturally to her when she was angry or questioning his authority, but many other times, she seemed almost timid. It was paradoxical.

She seemed ready to walk past him to take a seat closer to the door when he stood to greet her.

"Cadet Uhura, would you care to discuss your thesis proposal?"

" _Oh_ ," she said quickly, stopping in her tracks and nearly spilling soup on herself. "I didn't realize you'd read it so quickly. Um, I- I guess so, sir."

He motioned for her to sit, and she carefully set her bowl on the opposite side of the table to join him. She glanced down at his PADD.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"I would not have asked you to sit if you were. I was merely attempting to compose a letter to the Nemechek family."

" _Oh_ ," she said slowly.

He took the scrunching of the muscles of her forehead to be a sign of confusion, and attempted to explain himself better.

"As I'm sure you are aware, it is customary for the commanding officer of deceased personnel to draft a message to the family," Spock said.

"I didn't know that, actually," she replied. "But something like that can't be easy to do. It doesn't look like you've gotten very far."

He detected what he believed was a note of sympathy in her tone.

"It is proving more difficult than I believed. I did not know Cadet Nemechek very well, nor do I consider myself proficient in the use of comforting language, and I believe that is what his family will anticipate."

"You've never done this before?" she asked.

"No," he admitted. "Cadet Nemechek is the first individual to die under my command."

" _Oh_ ," she said, looking away. "Well, would you like some help?"

He briefly considered her offer. His first instinct was to refuse, but she seemed to have a keen sense for the emotions of her fellow humans, that was a quality that would be necessary to this task.

"That would be welcome."

She seemed taken aback by his acceptance, and turned the corners of her mouth slightly downward.

"I didn't know Nemechek that well either, and I don't think there really are any words that adequately describe someone's meaningless death."

"I thought you intended to provide assistance."

"I _am_. _Say_ that," she insisted. "Explain you didn't really know him, but he served admirably in the time you _did_ know him, and that his death _was_ senseless."

"I am uncertain, but that does not seem as though it would be comforting," he protested.

"It isn't intended to be comforting," she admitted. "They're going to realize you're Vulcan, _you know_. I doubt they're going to expect a lot of flowery prose about duty and honor. I know if I were in their shoes, that's the last thing I would want to hear. But surely somewhere in all of that Vulcan philosophy you believe in, there's something hopeful to say about death?"

He momentarily reflected on her query. Humans did not possess katras, but there were many classical Vulcan funeral blessings and prayers that might be fitting. They spent the next several hours composing an appropriate letter, diverting from their task numerous times to discuss philosophy and compare cultures.

Cadet Uhura had a quick and dynamic mind, and he was impressed at the depth of her knowledge and the variety of her interests. He recalled from his tenure as her instructor in the xenolinguistics programming laboratory that she was seeking a second concentration in Vulcanoid languages, and found her command of his own native tongue to be remarkably passable.

Vuhlkansu was a difficult language, and though she had an occasional problem with metathesis in longer words, a moderately limited vocabulary, and a tendency to drop hard consonants, she spoke confidently, and she could be generally understood.

They discussed her thesis proposal, and he recommended several minor changes. He was surprised that she was quite receptive to a number of his suggestions. His general impression of her had always been that she was, like so many humans, fiercely protective of her ideas, and seemed to view criticism as a personal attack, rather than as an opportunity to develop.

Her attitude had been his greatest concern in agreeing to become her advisor, but he sensed he might have judged her unfairly. She was opinionated and could be easily frustrated, but she was not overly proud or argumentative. She was intelligent and had a genuine desire to learn.

When a new shift of kitchen staff began to trickle in, he realized they had talked through the night, and the mess hall was preparing to serve breakfast. It was unusual for him to forget the hour, and he understood that to be an indication that he required rest and meditation. He knew from the red color in the whites of her eyes and the dark circles underneath them that she was also in need of sleep. He recommended that they should return to their quarters, and he stood to leave.

He walked with her, as her quarters were on the way to his own. After several minutes, she looked at him seriously and said, "Thank you, Commander Spock."

"I am uncertain of the cause of your gratitude."

"Where do I start? Agreeing to be my advisor, fixing my broken ribs, saving all of our lives," she explained.

"As to the first two, you are welcome. As for the last item, I did not act alone. Your gratitude is also owed to Cadets Sulu and Chekov, as well as to yourself."

"I didn't really _do_ a whole lot, when you think about it."

"Humility is an admirable quality, but it often diminishes accomplishment," he countered. "You also saved my life, as well as my left arm, and participated in the seizure of the Nausicaan vessel."

"No, that last one was pretty much all Chekov," she laughed. "Chekov told us the real story in Wilcox's office, and while it's still amazing, it's also kind of funny. When he was transported onto the _Guramba_ , one of the Nausicaans was already passed out drunk and the other one was very close to it. Maybe that's why they messed up Sulu's transport."

Spock had wondered how the small-framed Russian had managed to overpower two Nausicaans that were approximately twice his mass, but he replied, "It is still an impressive feat."

"It _is_ ," she agreed with a smile. "But I've already heard the story a half dozen times, and it changes a little bit with each telling. I get the feeling that by next year, instead of two drunk Nausicaan pirates, there will be _fifty_ , and they'll all be _three_ meters tall, _and_ elite soldiers."

"Exaggeration seems to be a favored human pastime," he replied.

"Was that an insult or a _joke_?" she laughed in disbelief.

"There is no logic to be found in either insults or jokes," he explained, believing it should be obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of Vulcan philosophy.

She stopped at a narrow door and he understood they were at her quarters.

"Well, good night then, Commander," she said quietly. "Or good morning, I guess. I'm really looking forward to having you as an advisor."

He nodded slightly and watched her retreat into the small room. He was uncertain what to make of Cadet Uhura, but he expected they would have the next term to become better acquainted and he would be able to form a more holistic opinion.

When he reached his own quarters, he attempted to meditate for several hours, but found it was extremely difficult to focus himself. Each time his mind would begin to settle, he would recall echoes of the conversations that had transpired while he was unconscious, and then experience an intense ache in his left arm or tingling in his fingers that was significant enough to derail his concentration.

He abandoned his meditative efforts and for sleep. When he rose the next day, he began his official report on the incident. He spent the next twelve hours meticulously recalling the sequential details of the crash and subsequent survival mission. When he submitted his report to Captain Rajan, the captain informed him they would arrive at Risa at approximately 1500 the following day.

Their anticipated twenty-hour training mission had turned into a seventy-four hour trial. They were fortunate to be alive, but their lives were not owed to chance alone. As he reexamined certain elements of his report, he recalled that the cadets' final grade reports would be due the day after tomorrow.

He returned to his quarters and drafted a lengthy summary of each cadet's performance, considering the events both before and after the crash, fairly judging their deficiencies and accomplishments.

When he finished, he attached the detailed notes to the standard grading sheets for each student. He started alphabetically, and did not hesitate to give Cadet Chekov an exceptional rating. He had only given two exceptional ratings in his entire Academy career, and both had previously been earned by the bright, young Russian man.

He considered Cadet Sulu at length. The helmsman had shown astonishing calm in the minutes following the impact with the mine, composure that paralleled even the most seasoned Starfleet pilots. Sulu had also located the planetoid they crashed on through significant interference in the nebula. Like Chekov, his perseverance in deploying the distress beacons had secured their rescue by the _Pegasus_. His treatment of casualties could use some improvement, but that fact alone did not do much to detract from his overall performance. He eventually determined Cadet Sulu had also earned an exceptional rating.

Last was Cadet Uhura, and he deliberated her grade the longest. He had told her that an exceptional rating demanded talent and effort that were extraordinary. Declaring something extraordinary was a subjective task, but he had a wide range of experience for comparison.

Despite having the most severe injuries after the impact with the mine, Cadet Uhura had remembered her training and had performed admirably. Her mistake in failing to locate the emergency distress beacons prior to the impact had added the largest complication to their survival, but she had been prepared to give her life to ensure their rescue by attempting to deploy them up until the last moment, and she might have been successful if he had not pulled her to the floor of the shuttle.

She had also prioritized well, noting that his injuries were more severe than he'd initially suspected. Even veteran officers often failed to recognize needs outside of their immediate specialties, preferring instead to focus upon what they were trained to do, rather than what needed to be done.

Her talents within the area of communications had never been in doubt, but being able to observe them more closely over an extended period of time had shown him that she had enormous potential for a successful career in Starfleet. He had been impressed by her meticulousness in scanning on a wider range of channels during their training mission, and though she had been too slow to identify the minefield to prevent the incident, she _had_ detected it, which was a feat the entire communications staff of the _Pegasus_ had never done.

Furthermore, her ingenuity in drafting the selectively rotating program had alerted them to the presence of the Nausicaans in orbit, which likely had helped lead to Chekov and Sulu's success in thwarting their ambush.

He checked the box for "exceptional" without further consideration.

She _was_ exceptional. He submitted his grade reports and turned off the computer terminal.

Cadet Uhura was _very_ exceptional indeed.

He paused.

 _They_ were, he corrected himself, remembering Chekov and Sulu. _They_ were exceptional. Nothing more.

* * *

 **Author's Note** : So this is the end of this story, but not the _end_. I have posted a sequel to this story titled, _An Algorithm for Dating_.


End file.
